What made me a ‘Good Father’?

Fatherhood for me began 22 years ago at the age of 33. Our first child, a beauty-full daughter, was born at home on a Wednesday around 8:30pm. At the time I could feel that this was a divine moment, one that I would never have experienced without choosing to have children.

I clearly remember how completely hopeless I felt when the midwives and nurses left our house – I had never taken care of a baby before in my life. That night I had to change her nappy and I felt how fragile and helpless she was; and I felt my own uncertainty about what to do.

From that night on I also began to identify myself with my new role of ‘father’, but failed to feel what the true meaning of this was for me. Instead, I just did what I felt was expected of me to qualify as a ‘good father’. As our child grew up I tried to form and guide her to suit my ideals of what I felt I needed to make of her.

When I write it like that now I feel how arrogant it was of me, wanting to mould a child to my ideals and beliefs and not let them grow up in their true nature. Is this what we are actually doing when we parent, in contrast to providing a loving connection where a child will be met and seen for who they truly are?

An interesting set of questions now arises:

Where did these ideals and beliefs about being ‘a good father’ come from?

Is it possible they are provided by society (family and friends, school, TV, magazines, books, health professionals, etc), and that I chose to adopt them to be a ‘good father’? I was not consciously aware of the fact that I was using ideals and beliefs at all, let alone considering that they could have been ‘delivered’ to me.

What did I choose from the package of fatherhood ‘pictures’ which were presented to me?

Did I look for a certain type of fatherhood picture I was familiar with or did I select some on purpose, because they suited me the best, in order to not be confronted with the responsibility that comes with feeling and making my own choices?

Why was I looking for a fatherhood picture in the first place?

Could it be that I was looking for recognition and acceptance for being a good father, instead of trusting the love and wisdom within me to be my guide?

Given all of this, was it then possible that:

Everything in society is set up for me to doubt myself and ‘believe’ what I am told, instead of trusting what I know and feel deep inside?

Although I was not aware of it at the time, in my uncertainty of how to be a father I followed a fatherhood picture, taking on ideals and beliefs like…

As the parent I have to mould my child to make them ‘valuable for society’. If I do not, the child will be lost to society.

I will be the provider and carer for everything my children need; I will be always there for them.

I am the parent, therefore superior to the child, the subordinate.

I have to support them in all that they do, even if it is something I don’t agree with.

My children are perfect; my children do not behave badly.

They must have the same ambitions in life as I have.

I will be the perfect father for my children, they will not want for anything and I will show that to the world.

I have to be proud of them.

My children have to listen to me because I am their father.

I will have an “I know what is good for you” attitude, and so on.

But this makes me wonder:

If all these fatherhood ideals and beliefs are not me, because I have taken them on from outside of me, what then is the real me and the real father in me?

The answer for me has been to slowly unravel all my fatherhood pictures, to become aware of them and discard them, one by one. Through this discarding of what is not me I am becoming more true, more who I really am – which is much, much more than just being a ‘good father’!

This now reflects in my deepening connection with my children – a connection that is based on a true equalness, and a deep trust in myself and in what I feel.

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Living in the Netherlands – turning on the light and enjoy working in project teams – that’s what I do as an electrical engineer in the engineering and construction industry. I have a beautiful wife and love her dearly. She and our three children have irrefutably shown me that life is about love and nothing else – that in life, is all we need.

I so agree Brooke, as mothers we have so many of our own pictures that govern our behaviour. And as daughters it makes so much sense why our fathers acted in the way they did. This is a very supportive blog. Ariana Ray, UK.

Thank you for sharing Nico – it is amazing how we can be and largely are/have been run by the wave of what society tells us we should be doing and behaving – all to fit in, to gain acceptance, to think we are doing the ‘right’ thing. It is exposing yet extremely freeing, as deep down we all know the truth even though it may be hard to admit it at times.

yes, this further exposes that we seek love outside of ourselves until we re-connect to the love within.

Ingrid Ward says:April 24, 2015 at 3:22 am

I agree Nico, exposing these “false beliefs we carry”, is so very healing, and when you give yourself this freedom to be who you truly are, it is like a huge and unnecessary weight being lifted, a weight we have carried for so long without even realising it

And it was a heavy weight Ingrid, that we unnecessary carried with us. It is such a relief for my body to free itself from this weight and to be able to move more freely without it. Without the weights my body can tell me more of the truth of life it is so naturally connected with. Instead of being the supporting body for carrying the burdens of the undealt issues in life my body is now filled with joy, stillness and harmony. My body now connects me to the truth of life I originate from, a life we all deserve to live on this earth.

The false beliefs give us a false security. Thinking we will be loved, liked and worthwhile as long as we do ‘good’. It is always working hard and very tiring. No wonder we feel so much lighter when we can let go of them. Although this letting go can feel new and unfamiliar it is the greatest gift you can give yourself and everyone around you.

Totally agree with you Monika especially when you said
“Thinking we will be loved, liked and worthwhile as long as we do ‘good’.”
That is such a big fat lie that we all fall for hook line and sinker. And feels to me like a very old religious belief.

Bernadette Glass says:May 20, 2014 at 9:21 am

Thank you Nico, your reflections are so important. Only when we share our true experiences can we begin to break the hold that ideals about parenting or any other aspects of life have over us, mostly without awareness. If one father is inspired to reflect more closely about his fatherhood, as a result of your sharing, what a gift for him.

It is true that most ‘fathers’ are not true in expression because they have taken on fatherhood pictures. This not only influences the relationship with their children but also with their partners and all others they are related with. So unraveling our ideals and beliefs will not only have an impact on our relationships but will also be reflected in society one day because we are related to everybody.

I agree Nico – the ripple effect we have is huge. It’s so easy to compartmentalise our lives and consider that how we are in one relationship or area of our life doesn’t affect all our other relationships. Thank you for sharing – it’s a really inspiring piece.

So true Nico, most fathers are not true in expression due to the fear of rejection and so get caught up in ideas and beliefs. Only when they start to unravel ideals and beliefs their true expression will flow and the true Father will express.

It’s amazing how we go to create these pictures of what a good parent is, and then fall and stumble when they are not met. They can have such control over us and yet when we do let them go we can see they hold no power at all. Awesome work. Ariana Ray, UK

It is amazing how much unnecessary pressure we can place on ourselves to present a certain way in any aspect of our lives. The sad part is in this we all miss out on getting to enjoy and know people for who they truly are.

Hi Nico, A clear and honest description of the process (the disregarding and letting go of old ideals, beliefs) you went through. It was great to read and feel how the connection with yourself deepened and as a result, how the connection with your children grew. As you beautifully expressed: “This now reflects in my deepening connection with my children – a connection that is based on a true equalness, and a deep trust in myself and in what I feel.” Awesome.

So true Jenny. Ideal and beliefs are so restricting. It can be applied in all relationships. Looking back I can see how I acted this out with looking for a partner… holding onto a belief that they needed to have some of my Father’s qualities. However, I am seeing the ideals and beliefs more clearly now and with honesty for what they are. Great article Nico, thank you – lots of food for thought.

The pictures that we hold onto and take on are laced with all these ideals and beliefs which have a major impact in our relationships with others as well as ourselves. Yes it is time to let go of them one by one as you say to allow us to be who we naturally are. Thanks for sharing Nico.

Thank you Natalie, we only need to be ourselves and that will do all what’s needed. When we put a picture in place instead, we will keep the others and ourselves from being who we naturally are and continue to contribute to all the relationship issues we have all over the world.

Dear Nico, there is so much wisdom in your words. That being a responsible parent involves nominating and clearing any beliefs and ideals out of the way so we can be ourselves and able to simply connect and meet our children as equals. And as you say this affects all our relationships and the way we are together in society. Thank you, Nico.

I really enjoyed this blog, thank you Nico. I was particularly struck by your question, ‘Did I look for a certain type of fatherhood picture I was familiar with or did I select some on purpose’. I had not thought to ask this sort of question about all of the roles and beliefs that I have taken on.

Catherine, it is really interesting to investigate the reason for choosing a fatherhood picture or any picture we choose, as an ideal or belief to take on.

What holds us from living our true selves?

Recently I found that I held a belief because I did not want to take the responsibility to stop the abuse that I had in the relationship with my son. With the abuse I mean there was inequality in our relation because of the father/son belief, resulting in not meeting each other in truth. Physically this acted out in being disrespectful to each other and not being prepared to truly listen to what we have to say to one another. When we allow ourselves to truly feel this form of abuse we can feel that this hurts as much as physical abuse.

I was in the belief that by not taking the responsibility and say stop to the abuse, I was keeping the harmony in this relationship, and at the same time I allowed the abuse to continue and even expand, ouch.

Catherine and Nico I too pondered on this question and not just around family, do we subconsciously choose an ideal or belief on purpose to keep ourselves from being honest and not looking at what needs to be addressed? Recently I have caught myself doing this quite a lot and it is very insiduous and I can only really see the belief after the event. I love your honesty and understanding Nico, we do not always see being disrespectful as abuse but it is, and allowing it to continue unchecked can cause the in-equality and separation between two people .

Well said Nico. Ideals, beliefs and expectations cause havoc in relationships.
I can certainly relate to your ‘ouch’ here – “I was in the belief that by not taking the responsibility and say stop to the abuse, I was keeping the harmony in this relationship, and at the same time I allowed the abuse to continue and even expand, ouch”.

Thank you Nico, I also tried to be the good father sacrificing who I was, to become something I was not. I can feel the truth in your statement, “Through this discarding of what is not me I am becoming more true, more who I really am – which is much, much more than just being a ‘good father’.”

Hi Steve, it is really beautiful what we are able to expose in all aspects of being a man. One of these is being the good father. Thanks to the teachings and immense support available from Universal Medicine and their associated practitioners we are able do this now and become more and more who we truly are.

It’s really lovely to read the interaction of words between you both, I thought how inspiring is this conversation between two men that they can share their experience with such openness and honesty. You have both left something quite remarkable for another person to read and ponder their own ideals and beliefs about being a ‘good’ parent.

Pow – Steve you nailed it right there for me. I have tried and tried to be a good somebody in so many of my relationships and always ending up being something that I am not. This is particularly true as a father, and obviously begs the question “who is Dad”. That has been a big ouch for me in exposing the ideals and beliefs.

“Who is Dad” These three words really stood out to me Simon, for the longest time had I ever of been asked such a question I would say I would not have been comfortable or confident in answering such. Yes I know who my Dad is but since both him and I along with the rest of our family have each been willing to look at ourselves underneath the roles we may play. Each to various degrees and by no means perfect but I can now say that I have a greater sense of “who is Dad” now more than ever as I am allowing myself to feel more the person underneath the roles of ‘good this or that’. That true person doesn’t even compare to the actor of whatever role anyone may take on and this is something that is building the more I feel me under anything I may pretend to be.

“Everything in society is set up for me to doubt myself and ‘believe’ what I am told, instead of trusting what I know and feel deep inside” – this is true Nico, thank you for your wonderful sharing. It is a blog that would benifit every father and mother to read as society is plagued with ideals and beliefs on parenting that do nothing but hold us back.
“….. life is about love and nothing else – that in life, is all we need.” Beauty-full!

Yes the ideals and beliefs we take on are so capping of ourselves and so damaging to others. I am learning more and more that the true art of parenting is simply to be myself and maintain a consistent loving quality in what I do and simply allow my children to express from their naturalness with no preconceived ideas about how they should be doing it. Firm boundaries definitely but no capping on expression…

Beautifully written Nico. What a wonderful set of questions you asked yourself. If every father stopped to ask what it truly means to be a father without the ideals and beliefs of how you should be, what amazing children we would have in the world today.

Thank you Nico for writing this blog. It feel it applies to women too, and thank you for your honesty when you say … “Recently I found that I held a belief because I did not want to take the responsibility to stop the abuse that I had in the relationship with my son. With the abuse I mean there was inequality in our relation because of the father/son belief, resulting in not meeting each other in truth. Physically this acted out in being disrespectful to each other and not being prepared to truly listen to what we have to say to one another. When we allow ourselves to truly feel this form of abuse we can feel that this hurts as much as physical abuse. I was in the belief that by not taking the responsibility and say stop to the abuse, I was keeping the harmony in this relationship, and at the same time I allowed the abuse to continue and even expand, ouch.”
This also happens with partners as well as children, when we don’t give them the space to be who they truly are.

Ouch, indeed. I too was under the illusion that ‘keeping the peace’ was the thing to do, and I now see that it is my responsibility to make sure that issues do not remain unresolved, and that any disrespect gets exposed.

Another ouch from me too Janet – I now know just how harming keeping the peace is to everyone, myself included – claiming responsibility and exposing ill energy and disrespect feels so different in my body. It may not always be liked by others, and I am getting over that too.

Amazing Nico – imagine if all parents were like you, the world would be a very different place. I don’t have children as yet, but many of my friends do and I have watched many of them struggle through taking little care of themselves. It’s hard but ultimately the lack of self care leads to this being taken out on the child however long later. This results in stressed out parents and kids who are both relieved by TV and sugar to get them through. However, meeting lots of parents associated with Universal Medicine and seeing how they have introduced self-care for themselves and how they raise and treat their kids and what the end result is, in that by teenage years they are full of love and beauty and able to be a real shining light at school and in those challenging times you go through as a child and young adult, I am now beginning to consider parenthood myself. The impact we can have on children by showing them love for who they are and not what they do is huge and is the foundation for humanity sorting itself out for sure.

Thanks Nico for the blog, and great comment Rachael – I love your last point “the impact we can have on children by showing them love for who they are and not what they do is huge and is the foundation for humanity sorting itself out for sure”…. You have just solved much of the world’s exhaustion and stress – from trying to live up to what is expected of people to ‘do’ instead of just ‘being’, as we have (not so cleverly) learned to do as children.

Hi Nico, what a great sharing on such a fundamental topic. I’ve been very inspired by this along with Serge Benhayon, Michael Benhayon and Curtis Benhayon as true role models of being a father. The points you raise about the fatherhood picture are massive. Where did these things come from and just what are they for? As I’m not yet a father I’ve not taken much time to consider these points, yet if I do – a similar set of how would I be as a father comes up. A great point to reflect on, as when I look after children I get the same things come up and the fear of what to do. Thank you.

Nico, I love your honesty and sharing. The questions you ask about ideals apply in so many situations. For me I can feel the pictures I’ve bought into as a daughter and in so many other ways, and also the expectations and pictures I placed on my own father based on ideals I had – what a merry go round where we cap each other with our pictures when we’re all wanting to just be ourselves. Your question about the pictures you choose is spot on – were they familiar, for comfort, and why not choose to be the real you – I can feel an opening to look anew and consider the pictures I’ve bought into – why I have, and if they are just comfort. Super blog.

Nico this line says it all “Everything in society is set up for me to doubt myself and ‘believe’ what I am told, instead of trusting what I know and feel deep inside,” and then of course we raise children who don’t know how to trust themselves as they have had role models who don’t trust themselves. What a massive set up! Great to be beginning to free yourself of these constraints of ideals and beliefs. I too am slowly developing that trust in myself so I can too parent from a connection to me and then to the other. It is so much more freeing! And Loving!!!

That is so true Vanessa, we don’t trust ourselves, so of course that then gets passed on to our children and we perpetuate the doubt. I have enjoyed reading all the comments on this blog as it shows its a topic that needs to be more openly discussed. Even though my children are now adults I can still feel how I have expectations and constraining beliefs around parenting.

There are that much ideals and beliefs around us of how we should be with family and in relationships it that it is almost impossible to not adapt one of these when we are not aware of this fact and as you say Elaine, then it even does not matter if you have children or not, we almost all have images of how we should be as a parent.

Nico, In reading your blog I really felt where that harmful paper dragon, FEAR, comes from. It is born of the emptiness when we abandon our true innate knowing and then fed when we take in the outer belief systems in search of guidance which we are, then, not feeling within. I cried at the end where you express that you have come back to your own senses, your own truth and to Love. So healing.

Jo, I love the simple and powerful way you have exposed fear here –
“… that harmful paper dragon, FEAR, comes from. It is born of the emptiness when we abandon our true innate knowing and then fed when we take in the outer belief systems in search of guidance which we are, then, not feeling within”

I love this blog Nico – you know why – because it’s sooo relatable to all relationships. What a beautiful opportunity you’ve given yourself and us all in exploring how relationships can be based on True Love.

Exactly Shevon great point. With all types of relationships we can often go in wanting them to be a certain way, wanting to mould it into a way that suits us – how arrogant that feels. Yet what an amazing way to also relate what Nico has written to having real relationships not just “good” suitable ones.

Thank you Nico, this is very inspiring to read. I can relate to what you have written, when I had my son I wanted to be a ” good mother” and drove myself crazy listening to advice from health care professionals, family and friends. There was so much different advice I felt lost as to know what to believe. In the end I began to learn to trust myself and make my own decisions and so things changed and I begun to truly connect with myself and my son. The experience of raising a child was then completely different and became most of the time, enjoyable, playful and amazing.

Your blog is so clear and beautifully expressed, Nico, and reminds me to keep working with the ever ongoing and deepening relationship with my own children, (now in their forties). We are still letting go of the ties, but as we do our relationships become far more honest, equal and harmonious. And the ties are about investing in the identity of “mother”, “daughter”, “son” first before being ourselves in who we truly are. So then it is generational as I consider my relationship with my father and mother, long since passed over, and find I am still working with that. From a simple beginning, “What made me a Good Father”, you have widened and deepened and made it relevant for us all, thank you.

My mother is still alive, age 90 and it is beautiful to be able to appreciate her as a person and being able to let go off the previous frustration and resentment I held previously.
We have both learnt much from the harm the ideal ‘good mother and good daughter’ syndrome played out in our lives and continue to explore this to bring more awareness and love into our interactions.

It is a great thing when we are able to acknowledge that what we have lived has not been true but was there because we were not aware of it. By becoming aware of the fact that our parents too lived a life based on the the ideals and beliefs which were told to them by there family and communities they were part of, we are able to see through these falsities and can reconnect to our true connection based on love.

Yes Nico, Awareness is a true key for bringing us insights into what is actually not true. As my own awareness has deepened (and continues to do so), so many old outdated ideals and beliefs are no longer’ able to bind me up causing such grief and perceived struggle.

Thank you Nico for so honestly sharing about your journey through parenthood and that you now have “a connection that is based on a true equalness, and a deep trust in myself and in what I feel.”
I remember when I first had my daughter being anxious of being found out as ‘not a good mother’, I felt to support her to explore her own path but didn’t have the confidence to follow through with that. She has come back to live with me as an adult in the last year and we have both found it challenging but are gradually establishing a relationship based on more honest communication. She also helps me to care for my elderly father who I have spent most of my life in reaction to but feel that this time with him has been very healing as we have both been letting go of our ideals about what a ‘Good Father’ looks like.

It so amazing to read this Helen and I know that the more I am learning to simply be myself and communicate honestly and gently, the more healing it brings to my whole family. Years of guardedness and defence from deep hurts are falling away, to be replaced by simple straight forward conversations with no agenda. Whether we are parent or child, we all have a responsibility to simply be ourselves and be honest and caring towards one another, without any expectations. Life is much lovelier when we do.

Hi Nico, wow I really felt the amount of pressure parents take on from the ideals and beliefs we have around children, how liberating that you have begun to let all this go and live from what you know is true, rather than what you’re told is true.

Hi Nico, I love the questions you asked yourself – amazing honesty and how you started to debase ideals and beliefs around the picture you had of fatherhood. This is so inspiring for both men and women, thank you.

Beautiful Nico, what an expose on parenting! It feels so exhausting to set foot on this conveyor belt of manufacturing and delivering perfect children! Thank you for your deep honesty in sharing your journey and how beautiful to know and feel that deepening connection and love you are building with all the members of your family, from a place of equality rather than authority. What a huge blessing to the world.

This is Beautiful Nico. Great sharing and a lot of insights about relationships and especially parenting. Also what you astutely outline, the extent to which we can take on ideals and beliefs that do not belong in our heart and we run with them at the expense of our true expression – this can just as easily be applied to any aspect of life. You provide a great way of asking ourself questions to clarify it for ourself. Thank you.

Yes Golnaz, as you say this can be applied to all aspects of life. For me when I ask myself if what ever I am doing feels right for me or not, most the time it is my body that gives me clear answers, that I then live by and with that am able to let go of the old that is not me.

Nico, this is a great article and I thank you for your beautiful honesty. It’s a blessing for all men, women and children to hear and feel such honesty. You’re expression is gorgeous. What strikes me about your article is how massively complicated we make it! Isn’t it fascinating that the road to true parenting is actually ALL about LETTING GO. Yet, as a parent that is exactly the opposite of what we do. All along the journey, and it starts way, way before the child is even born, we are collecting images, ideals, beliefs, hurts, doubts, dreams, hopes, fears, goals etc… thousands and thousands of bits of baggage that weigh us down and crush us – that’s the true reason we are exhausted as parents – not the sleepless nights!! But what your blog has explained and what I am learning myself as a parent, is that the more I let go of all the externally imposed garbage, the truer a parent I become. It’s super simple. I have it all. Just be me. Thank you Nico for your inspiration. I shall be returning to this blog often!!

Thank you Otto, it is indeed all about letting go of that what is not me and that not only frees my energy and vitality but also releases my physical body of the constant tension, pains and strains that are there to hold the taken on ideals and beliefs. It is indeed very simple if I allow myself to feel who I truly am and stop looking outwards to what the world expects me to be.

I love your point Otto and it’s true. Trying to keep up with all the checklists in our heads of how and when to do things for our children can frazzle your brain and drain your body. How liberating to know none of it is needed just the real essence of you.

So true Otto, I love what you have shared about it being all our ideals etc. that we try to live up to that cause our exhaustion as parents. It is a constant work-in-progress for me to let go of what I am Not, and to parent simply from who I am.

Thank you, Nico, for so beautifully exposing the madness of choosing not to feel or ponder the roles we take on and just absorbing a rule book from somewhere ‘out there’. And then how sweet and simple it is when we let go and allow our true nature to inspire the way we live and relate to our children and everyone else.

Hi Matilda, I love the way you call it ‘the madness of choosing not to feel or ponder’ and how ‘sweet and simple’ it can be when we let go of looking for solutions somewhere ‘out there’. For me I can feel this deeply now to be true. When I was looking for solutions ‘out there’ it only ever brought me some level of recognition from another I was looking at, not any true clarity that I now feel from within.

It is great what you have felt and shared here especially “Where did these ideals and beliefs about being ‘a good father’ come from?” for me I could relate this to many different roles not just about it being a good father but how in the past I have automatically taken on roles as daughter, sister, auntie without first truly connecting to my relationship with that person and coming from there. Without first truly connecting to me. Thank you for sharing.

Hi Nico, I found this beautiful to read and feel – I was feeling how the love you have developed in you has allowed this honest and open review of parenting. It is incredible the arrogance we have about knowing what is best for our child without consulting the child. All those ideals and beliefs as you say we take on board from our own parents, the media and society in general. The presentations from Universal Medicine and the Ageless Wisdom have been an inspiration to me too which has meant I have begun to develop a true connect to self and love and started to use that connection to reflect on how I live and how truly I love.

I can certainly relate to much of what you have all shared here. It’s no wonder men in general are so lost and out of touch with who we naturally are when ideals demanding how we ‘should’ be abound; to be a good: man, father, husband, son, brother, friend, worker, student, etc… They are really rammed down your throat from such a young age. To simply let go of all that and allow myself to be the naturally tender and gorgeous man I am has been, and still is, a most empowering and liberating process.

I feel the same as a woman and a mother, sister, daughter, etc. there are so many boxes to tick if we wanted to live that way. But nothing compares to letting go of all of these criteria and just enjoying being me.

Wow. An amazing, honest and very clear expose of how we can fall for a picture a mental image of what a ‘good father’ is. As a father myself I can relate to most of your list of ideals and beliefs and great question to ask ‘where do they really come from?’ And why are they any better than trusting my own inner wisdom? I can also relate to your point that the best form of parenting is simply getting out of the way and allowing and encouraging a child to naturally develop into who they really are rather than who I want them to be or appear to the world to make me look good.

Absolutely Andrew, ‘the best form of parenting is simply getting out of the way and allowing and encouraging a child to naturally develop into who they really are rather than who I want them to be or appear to the world to make me look good’. How freeing is this for the child. To simply meet and love them for who they naturally are, without any expectations.

Nico there is so much to consider here. All the pictures we buy into as parents and the expectations we have of our parents, which will be smashed if they do not deliver. This is such a huge and important topic, thank you Nico.

Thank you Nico for this exposing and inspiring blog – how we can fall so easily into certain behaviour ‘traps’ through a mental image/picture of how ‘it should be’. This opened up further awareness for me of how damaging on any relationships this mental picture is across the board – good daughter, good son, good wife, good student, good husband, good mother…. when all we truly need is a relationship with ourself first to bring true qualities to all other relationships.

Thank you Nico. This is a great area for us all to look at. Ideals and beliefs are such poisonous things that stop us from trusting and following our own inbuilt wisdom. It feels to me as if they are the world’s tools for controlling and moulding us to fit into its way of being rather than allowing us to explore and find our own.

I’ve noticed that as a father, when we invest in our children growing up to some ideal we have held they should be, it only holds them back from and allowing them to be themselves in full. It’s like we make things more complicated than they need to be.

Hi Nico, I especially appreciate how you have made it so clear that the ideals of parenting are not actually that useful or even appropriate when raising children. And the strength with which you write about just being yourself and trusting what you feel, that to me feels like true parenting, and is very inspiring.

Hi Shami, thank you for raising this point since it is an on going process of unwrapping myself from the ideals and beliefs I have build around being a good father. The other day I was experiencing some issues with one of my children and once again I was confronted with the harm I had done by the way I have parented, from these ideals and beliefs. It is such a blessing when I am able to see in honesty what is in front of me and that I can go from there with the understanding and acceptance; when I allow and trust my feelings. Communicating from my feelings always comes from equalness and is looking for true evolvement of us and of the relations we are in.

What a gorgeous blog Nico. I can feel the openness to a real way of fathering you have allowed by discarding all those beliefs. I have seen fathers who have desperately tried to live up to their beliefs about what it is to be a good father. Some of these beliefs are so unrealistic that they cannot be lived out which can leaves both parties feeling like they somehow failed and are not good enough to warrant the title father or daughter or son.

From reading your blog I am asking myself, what are my beliefs about being a good daughter and do I berate myself in any way because I do not live up to those beliefs? In the past I know I have berated my father for not living up to my beliefs about what a good father should be like. I feel there is further healing to be had for us both by my looking at this again more deeply. Thank you for inspiring this.

Very clear message….for me, it is to question any assumptions I have about life and the roles that I take on…Great to read how powerful the change can be when being honest.

In the past I had felt let down by my father, as I have grown into an adult I have learnt to understand were he is at in life and not put expectations on him. This has supported our relationship and it has grown to be one of understanding and mutual respect. To learn to live every relationship through Love rather than a Role is a great inspiration. Thank you.

Ideals and beliefs can tie us in knots. As a parent I was so consumed with trying to match the picture I had of what a ‘good’ mother should be, and be seen to be, I never lived up to my own expectations, and I completely lost sight of who I was. I can now see that this was offering a very poor role model for our children and was not healthy for the relationship I had with my husband. Seeing the imposed ideals and beliefs for what they are and learning to let go of the control, allow each of us to be ourselves and make our own choices as we find a loving way to be with ourselves and everyone around us, is very liberating. Our family is much closer and loving without the suffocating ideals and beliefs.

“I am becoming more true, more who I really am – which is much, much more than just being a ‘good father’!” Nico this sentence says so much in terms of how we limit ourselves to these roles which have such a narrow definition and are so restricting. When we consider being who we really are, I can feel how that is so much more than any role we could play.

It seems many people sacrifice who they are when they become parents, leaving who they are behind in order to conform to their ideals and beliefs of what being a parent means. Thank you for a great blog Nico and, as a daughter, thank you for the healing.

Thank you Nico for a beautiful blog and for unpicking the ideals that you as a father found yourself with. It is gorgeous to experience such gentleness, care and honesty around the subject of parenting. I was touched by your description of your first daughter when she was born when you ‘felt how fragile and helpless she was’. It is no wonder parents look outside of themselves for answers as they often feel quite vulnerable and helpless themselves to start with. Your blog has showed me how important it is to stay with the vulnerability in any situation and learn to feel and trust the beauty in that.

Beautiful Nico. What you share is inspiring. Through looking at my parenting beliefs I know that I fell into wanting my child to perform well as I saw this as a reflection of me being a ‘good mother’ How very selfish to put my self value onto a child so they carried the weight of my value rather than me having it myself. Quite ugly really and one that I have let go of as a result of basing my life and relationships on loving connection.

Thank you Nico for such a true and beautiful sharing of fatherhood and exposing its ideals and beliefs so clearly. It makes sense of how we are brought up as children from both our parents and by relinquishing our ideals and beliefs how we can parent truly.
Very inspirational and beautiful to read and feel .

Nico. A powerful blog on fatherhood. We all try to bring up our children in the best way possible. Teaching them right from wrong, but letting them also find their true way in life. They will always call on you for help and advise.

Wow, Nico. I read your list of ideals and beliefs about fatherhood and saw my own late father in all of them! Your blog’s message has enabled me to get a different perspective on what drove my father’s parenting style and to appreciate what he felt he was up against and had to prove to himself and those around him. As such I’ve been able to drop all judgment of him and the overly-protective, sometimes stifling boundaries he established in our family. So many thanks to you for providing such a game-changing blog. It should be in a prominent place in every maternity ward!

This makes a lot of sense even from the perspective of a daughter as I read this blog. I can see similar pictures that my own father tried to implement as I was growing up and how often they did not work. I can’t judge or blame my parents as they were not parented any differently, only the situations and times were different. Now an adult myself and through the presentations of Universal Medicine, am I understanding that I can be my own parent if I listen to my feelings over anything I have been told. I now have the chance to provide that love I wanted back then from others to myself.

A great blog Nico, parenting is a difficult subject to talk about because each person has their own guide lines and principles that can then become the ‘right way’ or the ‘wrong way’ to parent. Quite often our main reflections of parenting come from how our own parents parented us, and so it can be easy to take on many ideals and beliefs from them, whether we are aware of this or not. When we parent our children by being loving and caring of ourselves first, then we have a natural understanding of what is needed, without needing to fall back on all the ideals and beliefs that surround us.

I agree Alison I have noticed how I have a tendency to either parent in a way that is the same as I was parented (if I liked that bit!) or parent in the completely opposite way to my own parents (in reaction to it!). Either way it still means that I am parenting under the influence of outside information and experience rather than feeling for myself what is a loving way to parent my own kids. More and more I have been feeling for myself what I feel is a true way to parent and I know it won’t be perfect but at least it will be from me to the best of my ability and not just a regurgitation from outside.

Wow – Nico – this is a whole new way to raise a child! It is amazing how much of ‘what society says’ stands in the way of being our true selves and trusting our instincts. We’ve let parenting become a role and something that we ‘do’ rather than just being and seeing children as equals.
I really love how you have broken down all the things you did to fill this role, and actually, the simplicity you now feel when you don’t try to tick boxes. What an amazing way to bring a child into this world, seeing them as an equal so they don’t feel less, ever.

A lovely blog thank you Nico, that raises some great points for reflection, like is it possible, ‘Everything in society is set up for me to doubt myself and ‘believe’ what I am told, instead of trusting what I know and feel deep inside?’ This then sets us up to take on these external ideals and beliefs instead of trusting our inner wisdom. Beautiful that you came back to trusting your inner wisdom.

Thank you, Nico, for prompting me to consider what ideals I may still be holding onto as a parent, and for inspiring me to be prepared to see how imposing they have been on my daughters over the years.

We tend to have quite a lot of them, ideals and beliefs about how we have to be as a parent and I continue to work on discarding them. And as you say Janet, we have to be prepared to see the imposition we have used and to honestly look at these. It is sometime shocking to see what my way of parenting is returning to me, what my children reflect to me as being the outcome of the choices I have made in the past and for some of them I still continue to choose. But on the other hand, by letting go of some parenting pictures and choosing the wisdom I feel from inside instead, the relation with my children has changed amazingly to more equalness between us and that we now are putting effort into building a brand new relation based on love first. How beautiful life can be!

‘When I write it like that now I feel how arrogant it was of me, wanting to mould a child to my ideals and beliefs and not let them grow up in their true nature.’

This sentence says it all – and it instantly removes all of the false pressure of what ‘being a father’ means. It’s no wonder so many parents are stressed, anxious or nervous when they hold such an immense expectation of what their child ‘should be. It is so beautiful that you have shared this Nico, and your experience of being a truer father is one that offers connection and love – so your children can be who they already naturally are.

And know that not only me was doing this but that almost all parents do that with their children. How different would our world be if we stop ‘moulding’ our children to the ideal images that are shown by society and instead foster what innately is within the children we as parent raise. It is beyond our imagination how this will look like.

Talk about exhausting! I can feel as I read your blog Nico how draining it is to parent in this way. To feel almost the weight of all these ideals about being a father and the burden of having everything else in life to do with the only reward being the success of your children. It feels truly freeing to see and hold your children as equals.

Thanks Joshua for pointing to this aspect on the way we parent our children. You are completely right, holding on to these ideals and beliefs was draining my energy continuously. Although it is still a work in progress, I am liberated for a great deal of the ideals and beliefs around parenting and can now freely be with my children as equals.

Amazing blog Nico. It is so great you are able to see all these beliefs around fatherhood you took on and are now letting go of them. As your daughter I know all about the ideals and beliefs that I had in my ‘role’ as daughter. Now I am letting go of those just like you and am enjoying this extremely loving and fun relationship I have with you.

Thank you Nico for sharing this. I like how you ask the questions to unravel all the pictures of being a good father. There are so many many pictures we have of the different roles in life we play or rather we think we have to play instead of just allowing ourselves to just be ourselves and do things from our inner understanding and feeling.

So true Ester, we are so much more if we put aside all those ideals and beliefs and stop with playing the roles that are part of these. We naturally are equipped for everything we encounter in our lives when we live a life connected to our inner knowing instead of living a life being dictated by society.

Thank you Tim, it is great to help each other with unraveling the what we are not. It is really lovely how my relationship with my children has changed in a positive way. We where held in the belief of me being the father and them being the child. With releasing this picture we all are more free to be who we truly are and to build our relationships from there. We now have relations with each other based on equality and all the ugliness of being the “good father” and being the “good child” has disappeared.

Thank you Nico, I very much relate in the way of experiencing motherhood. So many ideals that then affect my relationship with my son. Thank goodness for the awareness I have come to through the work of Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon so I can unravel this tangled web of beliefs throughout my body and come back to the natural and true meaning of motherhood…

As you say Sara, the beliefs are held in my body and act more or less autonomously when I am not aware of the fact that I run my life based for a large deal on how society shows me how I should be. It is unbelievable how my relationship with fatherhood and parenting has changed since I have started to unravel the, as you call it, web of beliefs throughout my body. Fatherhood is just a tender and loving way of being that represents the love and care for the young and growing up in our communities.

Wow – great questions that you ask Nico. I feel in posing these you bring true fatherhood to us all. So amazing, compared to the cardboard cut-out, one-size-fits-all fatherhood by-numbers we buy into as we grow. It’s beautiful to read you seeing through these ideals. I am feeling now how these stereotypes work with being a man, a woman, a lover, a professional and even an esoteric student if we let them. Your words remind me that we have all we need, naturally. There’s no need to hide in any one of these constructions.

Joseph, I love the way you express the false fatherhood picture we bought into as being a: “cardboard cut-out, one-size-fits-all fatherhood by-numbers” picture that is presented to us by society. I would like to add ” take it or leave it” and then I would say go for the latter. By choosing from our inner knowing instead, we are able to show the world that it is possible to have true relations with our children based on equality and, that we as men can naturally love and take care for the children that live within our families.

Great comment Joseph it is only by being who we are and not hiding in roles that we can bring our true gifts to those around us. I am in the process of becoming a truer me Nico and I have been seeing the damage I have done by fathering according to beliefs, thank you so much for this insightful and inspiring article.

Thank you Tim for your open and honest sharing. It is inspiring for me to discuss the fatherhood issue among men, that we can speak openly about how we feel about it and to honestly share about the harm we unknowingly and unintentionally have done to the people we actually love that dearly.

Nico, I can so relate to this through being a good mother. When my daughter was born I did not trust that if I connected to her I would know what she needed and could support her from there. I asked everyone I knew for their advice and read books. Interestingly none of that worked. I was forced to listen to my daughter and myself and trust from there. That itself was a great opportunity. That is when things began to turn around. Now that she is 10 I am constantly reminded when I don’t make it about love first through her expression and the complication that comes in. I am constantly inspired by Serge Benhayon and Deborah Benhayon to parent with love, support my daughter to be all of who she is not who I want her to be and that that is all that is needed in true parenting.

Penny, it is great that we have such wonderful markers (if we allow ourselves to see them), that if we fail to truly parent from our hearts that things become complicated and nasty and will backfire to us so to say. And I agree with you that we have to appreciate the fact that we have such beautiful role models as Serge Benhayon and Deborah Benhayon who continue to show us what true parenting from the basis of love is actually about.

Wonderful to read your article Nico, and how, as you started to let go of the ideals and beliefs surrounding parenting, you developed a deeper connection with your children. A connection based on love and equality, sounds beautiful.

Yes Peter, I can now develop a connection with my children void of any ideal and belief. My relation with them is more equal than it ever has been, and I can now connect to the fact that I do love them so dearly just for the beautiful people the are and not for how they perform as being my children.

Nico, this is a great reflection on parenting and the ideals and beliefs around being a “good” parent. I can really feel how at times I was quite disconnected from myself when my boys were young- in this disconnection I hung onto the ideals and beliefs as it was too scary not to. I did not really allow my boys to teach me what they knew -again a belief about parents always knowing best. It is beautiful in the awareness I have now to connect to them as equals and to have them share in total honesty with me about what they remember as children and how they felt at that time. I appreciate them pulling me up when I over mother them or when I am not being the gorgeous woman who they know me to be.

Great point you bring in Anne, that as a parent we tend to feel superior to our children and we do not allow ourselves to learn from them. And yes it is great as they call me out when I am less connected or not fully living from my truth and when I can accept this from them as they are equal to me.

I love time with grandchildren and being humble enough to accept their wisdom. Observing their truth being expressed with other family members can be interesting – it does not always sit well with their parents or others!

Humbleness is a great gift Stephanie, it gives us the possibility to be honest with ourselves and see the truth of things in relation to ourselves. Children do cary a wisdom equal to us adults, grandparents or parents. Wouldn’t it be great if this was a known in our whole society?

Agreed Nico, if the whole of society truly respected and valued the wisdom children carry, how valued the children would feel for being met for who they truly are, rather than how people/parents sometimes treat them as having no understanding……how different the teachings handed down through the generations would be then.

Great article Nico. Trying to live up to the picture we paint for ourselves of what it means to be ‘a good parent’ is doomed to failure. Children have a way of just being themselves and showing us that being a parent is not about trying to make children conform to our ideals and beliefs but supporting them as they find their own way in life.

So true Mary, and it is all around us that people are failing on being the parents they had in mind to be. And the same with schools, they too fail in meeting the children and assisting them in finding their way in life. We as a society will enormously benefit when we start to approach our children as being unique and precious to us all in the first place and that we are there from the start to develop relations with them that will support them in becoming true members and servants for the society we live in.

Thank you Nico for this great article. It is amazing that we can have a ready set of rules and regulations as soon as the baby is born. It’s great to question and start feeling in our bodies what is our truth in all this. As a mother and daughter there is much healing here.

As I read what you share Shelley I cannot but feel how the pressure of the ‘ready set of rules and regulations’ that any of the societal roles and expectations that we place on anyone traps them and stops them being who they truly are.

Indeed there is a lot of healing needed in the way we are and have parented Shelley. And it is such a blessing that we are able to stop this by us simply becoming ourselves aware of the fact that we actually are all equal to each other and continuously repeating the same pattern in parenting over and over again. Now we have the possibility to stop this and explore another way of living together in families and in society.

So true Laura, I can also relate to this story as a son of my father. I have always felt the true man in my father but at the end I became disappointed and gave up on him because he did not show his true tenderness in his life. Now I can see that he too was caught up in these pictures and I do not blame him for this as I do understand he did not know any different. I can now also feel what it does to the child, when the father lives these pictures, for me, I came to giving up on him and this affected at least the way I started becoming a father to my children henceforward. I was insecure about how to be as an father and hence took on the false pictures that suited me.

Thank you Nico for choosing the confronting task of taking responsibility for giving up responsibility in the first place. I have really felt the expectations to live out my life a certain way to fit into society’s mould…and it’s no wonder I have never fitted in like a glove. No one really does fit in, we just try so hard to make it look like we do, and conform like contortionists, for what appears to be no good reason other than to not be us, forgetting there isn’t anything wrong with us in the first place.

Thank you Elodie for bringing in this point, the fact that we tend to like to fit in into society but that we never fit in the way we believe we have to be in it. It will be a forever struggle and we will never be enough in this way. Instead if we live from our inner-heart, from the place we know the truth, there isn’t anything wrong with us and we will add our unique expression to society that will always fit in.

Your comment resonates with me deeply Elodie. From having spent many years of my life attempting to become whatever pretzel-like shape would bring me to fit into the societal / world mould to finally letting go of continually‘trying to’ fit in, just remembering to come back home to myself in my body (my own glove!) where I am appreciating and accepting there is and never has been anything wrong with me in the first place, only an old consciousness of illusion that binds me in a glue-like grip until it is too painful to continue in this way any longer. Thank God for Serge Benhayon’s presentations which have inspired me to know the true way with returning to a connection with myself.

I so much enjoyed reading your blog Nico
Thank you for expressing about your experiences of evolving into a gorgeous, divine Dad
It is great that you have been able to dispel the myths and expectations around fatherhood and that you are able to parent in a way that is so honouring and truly loving of your children.

It is great we are in this together Nico, to be honest about what is not true in our roles like the father, the mother but also the roles of being husband and wife. Thank you for you becoming more of you every day and it is this ongoing process of letting go that deepens our relationship with each other, our children , friends and in effect with everyone equally. True love is on its way!

Beautifully expressed Annelies and confirming of your relationship with yourself and all others. Thank you both for the true and real changes that I see deepening within you every time we meet at Universal Medicine presentations at The Sound Foundation. You are both glorious and reflecting a tenderness which is lovely to enjoy when with you.

Thank you Annelies, for being with me in this beautiful life we share together in building a loving way of living together that was unfathomable to me in the past, a love that holds us as equal and does not exclude anybody. Indeed true love is on its way and we share it with whoever we meet and interact with.

I was very nervous about becoming a father. Could I provide enough for myself, wife and now child? Do I have it in me to pull this off? I haven’t been trained in this area, how does one prepare, what if it all goes pear shaped? These were the questions running around my head.
What is behind all of this is, that as a young boy I witnessed my dad work 7 days a week to provide for us, and I felt the burden that I felt I was putting on my father. Everyday was an opportunity to earn money to get ahead to provide a better life. I got snippets of time with my father and I loved it. I remember he pushed me around the house for two laps in my billy cart. It was so much fun. He kicked the football with me for 15 minutes and then it was back to work.
It is real for me that my daughter just wants me to be there with her. That simple. It is myself that makes parenting complicated, not my daughter.

It is great to recognise the patterns and the origin behind our own behaviours and thoughts Daniel. Only then we are able to discard them and return to the simplicity life actually is. So true that we ourselves make parenting complicated and questionable. It is all about just being with each other and to enjoy the moments we have together in full.

It opens my heart to feel how differently you now choose to see your self as a parent. I’m going to remember what you have shared about what you thought parenting should be and open up to my father with more understanding and love for who he is. Thank you Nico.

Thank you Karen, and it it is important to have the other way there to to see for other parents to be able to take it into consideration. Therefore it is a good thing to share our livingness among each other since that will help everybody equally.

Expectations, from within and outside of ourselves, around parenting abound. I readily accept that I made many mistakes when I was raising my children as I felt I had to conform with what I thought was the norm for being a ‘good mother’. It has only been since attending Universal Medicine presentations that I have begun to get a clearer picture of why I carried so much tension around the role and began developing a more genuine understanding of what parenting entails. I believe my relationship with my children is now steadily deepening parallel with my relationship with myself.

As we develop our relation with ourselves first and start to self-care as presented by Universal Medicine we cannot else than also bringing this into all other relations we have. One of these is our relation with our children where we also have the parenting role being part of which is loaded with all kinds of expectations and false beliefs fed by society. But as you say Helen, when we build on the relation with ourselves we build on our relation with our children equally so and this pathway presents us a way of living that relieves us from the tension we felt before on raising children.

What a great blog Nico. What you have shared is truly valuable, thank you. Pictures that we hold ourselves to, serve only to divide us from feeling what is there to be felt, shared and honoured between a parent and a child, even any adult and a child for that matter. I do feel that there is a lot in what our current society presents that is ‘ set up for me to doubt myself and ‘believe’ what I am told, instead of trusting what I know and feel deep inside’ as you have questioned. It certainly has been an unraveling and a beautiful unfolding developing the trust from within, from my knowing whilst taking down the pictures. But as you also shared a deeper connection with myself has allowed a deeper connection with my step children and in all relationships really.

Thank you Carola, unraveling the pictures we have taken on, and while doing that not to replace them with new ones, we have to trust our own inner knowing and wisdom. Living from there will have an effect on all relations we have. They are so different from how they used to be for us in the past, because we allow ourselves to shine our light and invite the other to do the same.

Our kids really need their real Dad, not the manufactured one who is trying to be a good dad. This first relationship our kids have is fundamental to the relationships they form in life and the way they relate to people and life. Our girls and boys need to feel the tenderness and natural love of their dad and being valued for just who they are.

Thanks for sharing this Fiona, it really touches me when I read this. Allowing myself to feel that my children NEED the REAL dad in me and not the manufactured one. Your comment does directly let me go to my tenderness that is asked for and I can now also feel the great healing meeting each other with this ‘dad quality’ is bringing to our children and humanity as a whole.

This is brilliant Nico I have also fallen into this role of taking on ideals and beliefs to try to be a good father instead of being a true one. This and one of the other blogs, Wise Dad dedicated Dad-or just being me? has been a real help in remembering to just stay true in what you feel and not get sucked along and into the old ideals and beliefs trap.

Nico, thankyou for ‘turning on the light’ and illuminating these false pictures of being a ‘father’. In this and all that you share I can feel how I too have often blindly adopted similar falsities in terms of being a ‘mother’. Perhaps the greatest harm here is not what we do but that we don’t know that we are even doing it.

An then we are speaking about the willingness to take the responsibility for this fact and not to turn our backs and show the irresponsibility that have led us to this point. Although I am not always prepared to see my contribution to any harm that I am causing, there is the willingness in me to look for the truth in in life that helps me to arrest my on purpose held ignorance of the fact that I know I am harming.

Awesome point Liane – based on all that we are influenced with basically from the moment of our conception, how much of that runs our lives without even knowing it? So much in life has become ‘normal’ we don’t even stop to question it. Growing up I often heard parents say to their children “I brought you into this world I can take you out” and even though the hairs on the back of my neck use to stand up when I heard this, I never said anything because when I looked around everyone else seemed to thing it was OK, that it was ‘normal’. I stopped trusting myself and gave into what what was considered ‘OK’. Thanks to developing a greater connection with myself I no longer go against what feels true or wrong for me – regardless if it is considered normal or not.

Great blog Nico – I do not have children, but what you share is very relevant because we have all fallen for taking on ideals & beliefs of how life should be. So many times I have chosen to override what I have felt in my body to be true and instead chosen from my head and what society was telling me was right. The truth eventually surfaces, and I learn from the experience – and yet again I get reminded to stay true to what is felt from within as my guiding light in life.

It is a great way to live like this Marika, to stay true to what is felt within as our guiding light in life. It brings true joy and purpose in my life and that of others I meet and that simply by following this inner light.

“Everything in society is set up for me to doubt myself and ‘believe’ what I am told, instead of trusting what I know and feel deep inside?” What an awesome and powerful line Nico. As you outline in your article, there are so many roles we are set to play in life and all of them come with many differing ideals and beliefs, what it is to be a father in one culture is different in another, so many rules that govern and confuse us. Yet as you have discovered connecting to the man within has supported you to let go of all of that and allowed you to follow your own heart and to now trust that and not be influenced by the outside. Simply awesome, thank you.

Great point you bring in Caroline, we human beings live in cultures. To make life even more complex there are the cultures we live in. I can feel now that I have also looked across the different cultures I knew, to select father roles that would ‘fit’ me. For me this gave me a feeling of independence because I could choose from different cultures than my parents could, but it ended up by just doing the same as them only with a different flavour – not living to my inner knowing but to the pictures society showed to me.

Beautiful blog Nico, I love the way you share how the ideals and beliefs of being a ‘good’ father have hurt both you and me, as we are both learning and developing more and more the true us,the relation we have is just amazing to experience, how much support a father and son can give to each other in developing this beautiful relationship.

Thanks Benkt, I am deeply touched by your beautiful words. And it is so true that what we are developing feels that a natural way of living together as son and father, that we both care about each other and our relationship as equal responsible persons.
This way of living is so completely different from where we have come from. A life based on false taken on ideals and beliefs that was hurting us both that much but we did not realise until we found that there is another way of relating to each other in a father – son relationship, the way of the inner-heart where we are all connected to each other equally and that innately lives in us all. Thank you for sharing your beautiful life with me.

Tears of joy were felt as I connected to your beauty-full, heart-felt connection with your son Benkt van Haastrecht, So inspiring to see that we can always make amends and chose a different way of parenting our children, no matter what age they are or we are, and start by connecting to our hearts and from there express our truth.

Thank you Niko, for sharing your story. I too have been caught up in this fathering game. It was not until I realised first I was Paul a person, and my children were also people, and I was to treat them equally as all people. Then when the need arises and I feel the call to be the father, I take all of me to the role of fathering, which is not a belief or an ideal, but love meeting love.
It is a role of holding a child in love, supporting them to be who they are, allowing them to grow , making it about their being and appreciating who they are first – not applauding what they do at the expense of that beingness – pulling them up when they are lost in behaviour that is holding them back from their essence, offering them a way to be responsible for their body and self, so they can express themselves in full – and this equally so for all their friends and other children.
And when that call is answered, I return to Paul the person, allowing my children to feel their own choices of how they choose to live.

Beautifully expressed Paul, ‘Then when the need arises and I feel the call to be the father, I take all of me to the role of fathering, which is not a belief or an ideal, but love meeting love.’ ‘And when that call is answered, I return to Paul the person, allowing my children to feel their own choices of how they choose to live.’ In this way children feel their own responsibility from a very young age and can grow up to be responsible adults.

Amazing revelation Harrison, you show us that we do not need to have children for ourselves in order to hold fatherhood pictures. As we are natural fathers for all children in our lives it is for us men important to consider if we are parenting from our heart or from any ideal or belief we have taken on in our lives.

I loved reading this Nico. There is such a strong fashion right now for blaming dad and blaming mum for our woes. Do we ever stop to consider the pressures parents face, both in terms of their own lack of trust in themselves and the fact that from every direction and every person they are being told what to do and how to be?
And what an enormous sense of anxiousness and trepidation must there be in that moment when you hold that tiny living bundle in your arms and you know are responsible for protecting and nurturing that fragile little being. Having not been a parent I can but imagine what that would feel like. This of course would be a very different experience if we had deep trust in our own awareness and innate knowing.
I did not take my parents into consideration until quite recently and your blog has brought home to me that my parents did the very best they could. My father and I have wonderful conversations now he no longer needs to be a good parent, and I do not need him to be either.

A great comment Rachel. I can relate to everything you say here. It is huge for a person having a newborn baby to parent when there is no understanding of ‘deep trust in our own awareness and innate knowing’.
It has taken many moons for me to bring a stop to blaming my parents for various things.
Since attending Universal Medicine presentations with Serge Benhayon I have been inspired to make different choices and be responsible for dealing with my deep hurts to come back to love. It is beautiful for both of us, with me no longer requiring my mother to be what I thought my ideal parent ‘should’ be!

Your blog resonates with me Nico. As a mother with a young child and alone for 5 years I tried very hard to be both parents, to provide all the necessities of life. To be a good mother meant striving to live up to an ideal and beliefs I held dear. I had to prove to myself and the world that I was a capable and worthy human being. The struggle continued when I reunited with my partner adding the role of super wife. None of these roles ever fulfilled me. I neglected not only myself but those I loved by not caring for myself. Slowly but surely I am shedding the many layers of ideals and beliefs and letting love and light in.

So true Patricia Darwish, it is a matter of letting love and light in. Where love and light is there is not room for striving to conform to any ideal or belief or to have struggle in life. Instead joy and harmony will rule our lives and will show us our way how to fulfil the roles in life that we have to play.

“Through this discarding of what is not me I am becoming more true, more who I really am – which is much, much more than just being a ‘good father’!”
So true Nico, by being the true you, you naturally are a good father, but more than that, you are a great and inspiring father.

We are all naturally good fathers and good mothers when we allow our inner knowing to guide us in the roles we have to fulfil in life. We are equipped to fulfil any role we encounter in our lives as long as we connect to our inner knowing and not look outside for ‘advice’ on how we must look like in the roles we have to play.

Although it is still work in progress, it is really a blessing, both for my children as for myself, that we are walking this path. It is so liberating to allow ourselves to be us in full and we do not always realise that we are presenting such a great gift to not only ourselves, but to humanity as a whole. thank you Gemma Rubinna for reminding us on that point.

A very beautiful, touching sharing. I love the simplicity that backs this sentence – “Through this discarding of what is not me I am becoming more true, more who I really am – which is much, much more than just being a ‘good father’!” Thank you, Nico.

Life is in fact so simple if we can withhold ourselves form making things complex, and what you say Fumiyo Egashira, that indeed I am much much more than a ‘good father’ since this is how love acts out in our lives. Love cannot be contained in to a specific area or field of our lives, but will work on our live as a whole and on all the relationships we have.

As a daughter, it is beautiful to read about your experiences and how you have become aware and brought love into life and let go of the ‘roles of fatherhood’. Letting go of prescribed roles and ideals about what makes us a great person, father, mother etc allows our true nature to develop and through this true connection.

This seems to me to be such an important topic, about being a father. The list that Nico has made about the conditioned roles we take on, would appeal to the vast majority of fathers as being normal – we do not normally understand that these roles create pressures that make us different people to who we truly are. We are loving, tender, caring, gentle and above all, are capable of such a capacity to understand what it is like to come into the world and grow up with people around us who are doing their best, trying to deal with the pressure of their own conditioning. Yet the truth is when they take these roles on, believing them to be ‘the right way to parent’, they can never be there for you and truly meet you as a young child. I know my parents lived for 60 years together like this and it was horrible, even though they were considered to be ‘good parents’ and ‘very loving’. To free ourselves from this ‘normal’ is not easy. Yet it is possible and Universal Medicine has been a great support to me.

A gorgeous blog, Nico and at the same time very confronting for me to read as I reflect back to how I was a mother with my perceived ‘ideals and beliefs’. I feel I was so caught up in what I felt was the ideal way to be a mother that I didn’t stop to look and see the effect that the imposition was having on my children. I felt that they were vulnerable and required protection and the way in which I did this was claustrophobic and stunted any expression from them of who they truly were.
Now that my children are grown up and I have greatly changed, it is an honour to re-imprint these relationships with more love and dignity, and to appreciate how much I have changed as a mother.

Lovely to read that you can re-imprint your relationship with your grown up children to the way you are now living now. That is the beauty of living a life with love as its foundation, where we know that everything is energy, and in which we are able to change the configurations we have in our relationships that we have build in a different energy, on old ideals and beliefs.

Lovely to read Susan Lee, that you can re-imprint your relationship with your grown up children to the way you are living now. That is the beauty of living a life with love as its foundation, where we know that everything is energy, and in which we are able to change the configurations we have in our relationships that we have built in a different energy, on old ideals and beliefs.

I too, like Susan am choosing to re-imprint my relationship with my children, now adults and husband.
It is so much more beautiful when we choose love as our foundation. It is forever deepening and expanding. Instead, ideals and beliefs separates us and only causes disharmony in relationships.

As you say Simon Voysee, Universal Medicine has been a great support for me too. They helped me enormously to become aware of and to discard the taken on ideals and beliefs that withhold me from being true to myself and to all people around me. And looking back to my own up-growing this was horrible too, but I can also see, that my parents did not know any better and were living a loving life to the best of their abilities. It is now by us making the choices to stop this reduced way of living and stop the momentum of this by making our lives about living the love that lives within us all equally so.

It is great what you have presented here Nico. We often slip into these roles without ever questioning why things are the way they are presented, and often it is at the expense of what we know is actually true.

I agree with you Adam, often we actually know that we bagatelle the truth while we choose to accept what society is presenting to us as the way to be in certain circumstances. Therefore it is so important that we offer another way of living to humanity, a way of living that is lived from the innermost and that will serve as a reflection for other people to look at and to provide them acces to another choice for them to consider.

Adam this is a great point. To turn roles and ideals on their head and come from our true instincts first. Then our thinking is clear and on the mark. Also a big thank you to Universal Medicine who ‘think’ outside the square and offer questions to challenge society’s ideals and beliefs.

This is beautiful Nico. What a gift you share of letting go of ideals and beliefs and what society demands allowing a deepening connection with your children and everyone . This reflects the true loving way of being we all naturally are. The support of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine is an amazing gift and what we are all really searching for in ourselves if the truth be known.Thank you, I really enjoyed reading this. Inspirational.

I agree Tricia Nicholson that what Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine present to humanity is a gift and a blessing for all of us and I appreciate it like that. Through the presentations, courses and healing sessions I received, I have been able to build a true and loving connection with myself and everyone I meet and I now know that this is the way to go for all of us and that this will free us from the false beliefs about life we have taken on.

While I do not have children I can relate to the situation of when we haven’t chosen to listen to our own feelings and are surrounded by a seemingly vast array of pictures it’s like were do we start? who do we listen to if one says this and another says that, do we stick with what we know (how others have acted around us) or pick pictures that seem to ‘have it all’ – work hard, get money, have material wealth and life will be ok, find that ‘special someone’ and life will be good, dress, speak, act a certain way to be accepted by others who are also doing the same. The world is jam packed full of pictures telling us to fit ourselves into certain pictures because if we don’t then we are not part of the picture and thus not part of the world – but how can that be when we can’t stop being a part of the world? We can’t float off into space thanks to gravity so technically we are all in the picture already without having to even try to be something to get somewhere. Thank you for this reminder Nico that just being ourselves is enough 🙂

Thank you Leigh Matson, so simple it actually is, just being ourselves is enough. We need a guide in life and as long as we not choose to live from our inner most we need these pictures. And when we look around and see that vast array of pictures this shows us that many people have lost their true guide in life and are looking for ways to get a commonly shared purpose to their lives.

It’s quite something how much our unconscious ideals and beliefs rule what we do, its amazing Nico to stop and examine these, and gradually let them go.
By doing this we are changing things moving forward for future generations, if we don’t do this we simply repeat the same old ‘rotten ways’, as our previous generations did.

It is amazing what we offer to humanity when we choose to live from our inner most and let go of our ideals and beliefs. We then break the vicious cycle life is used to contained in and open up for another way of living, a way of living that will restore living our lives based on love and love only.

Your comment ‘I am the parent, therefore superior to the child, the subordinate’ confirmed what I had realised in recent times: that I was a little stuck on this even though my children are very capable, young adults. To see and regard our children as equals I feel is a huge step for parents. Thank you for your great article.

It is such a blessing we provide to our children, ourselves and to humanity when we stop parenting our children form being the superior parent but instead regard them as equal to us as the basis to parent from.

A great blog Nico. It has allowed me to cast my mind back to when I became a father and how I carried out that role. In just describing it as a role I have identified how I fathered. Being in the role of a father is not it. Being me and allowing me to be just who I am, naturally a father, is how it should be. Nothing else required.

That simple life actually is Brian Piper, but when I look around and from our experience it is not naturally there for most of us men until we choose to find our way back to our inner heart, to connect through our bodies to the ageless wisdom our bodies are part of.

Thanks Nico! It’s forever mind boggling how much energy we pour into being everything we are not. Your story makes complete and utter sense and every single parent, mother or father, should read it and feel into the fact that we have all been played like puppets to conform, albeit to a society we are responsible for creating, but therefore have the power to change.

I completely agree with you Elodie Darkish, we have the power to change. Imagine if we all stop with putting energy into what we are not, how much more energy we would have to enjoy more vitality in our bodies and into all the relationships we have.

Love it Nico, nothing really prepares us for fatherhood, you sort of pick it up as you go along. For me there has always been a fear of stuffing it up. Questions like, am I firm enough spring to mind. Our kids are just little adults and a lot of choices they make can’t be imposed upon, so just being there with love and support and being a true role model without the ideals and beliefs is a good start.

I can confirm Kevin McHardy, by just being there with all who I am, being a role model to the best of my ability is already making a great difference to the way the relationship with my children has changed.

“…wanting to mould a child to my ideals and beliefs and not let them grow up in their true nature.” This is a big ouch for me, Nico – I am starting to realise the extent and insidiousness of the ideals and beliefs I carry and have started picking them off as I notice them, but it’s a big job, hey? Really supportive to read this blog as a mother, but also as a sister, friend, daughter etc. too. Thank you.

As you say Jennifer Swallow, although it is quite a job to undo all the behaviours and patterns we have developed based on our taken on false ideals and beliefs. It is worth making an effort for it since it is such a blessing for all people involved when we start to make these changes and choose to live our lives based on what impulses us from the innermost. We not only allow ourselves to get free from the imprisonment but we also set free all people we have imposed our ideals and beliefs upon. We have to step out and deconstruct this creation and begin to live a life in brotherhood instead.

Thanks Nico for highlighting these ‘roles’ we take on to be what is called a ‘good’ father. They really are not the tender loving and caring being, relating to another beautifully tender living and caring one, albeit one being an adult and one a child. In truth, there is so much reflected back to us about how to be, from our children and so much we can learn. Yet there is also so much we can offer, by way of supporting our children to learn about the world and how to not take on and rise well above all the impositions put on us to take on roles, be it as a teenager, adult, mother or father.

Indeed we as parents have the opportunity to teach our children how to live a life based on what we feel inside and not on what we are told to be so they do not have to repeat the way of life our current society is showing to be te norm. This is what I would call true parenting.

Thanks for sharing Nico. No doubt we all have ideals when it comes to raising children. I like how you divulged that we tend to mould our children to suit the way we think they should be. This would get carried down from generation to generation as we tend to go off of what we have seen from parenting and how we have been parented. It’s great to begin to out what we carry in regards to parenting.

It is great when we can observe what we are doing and start to out what we carry in parenting. By doing so we will stop the ill momentum of how we are parenting nowadays and give us the opportunity to start to parent from the heart instead of from the given ideals.

Nico your article has the ability to dismantle the false beliefs that grip oh so tightly around parenting. With these beliefs gripping our children it’s easy to see how they succumb to the distortion that such beliefs impose on them and then like sausage meat they get spat out into society. When they in turn become parents they either parent the same way or rebel and choose a set of beliefs that are opposite to their parents. Either way they are not parenting from the wisdom within.

That is exactly what I did Alexis Steward, I rebelled against the way I was parented but what was so astonishing to me was the fact that although I was thinking I did it completely different than my parents, factually I was not and continued doing the same from the patterns I held in my body of which I was unaware of.

Parenting certainly comes laced with many ideals and beleifs and thank you Nico for your sharing from a fathers perspective. It certainly shows how something seemingly good can be grossly tainted to the contrary. Its great to call out these seeming good ideals as being limiting and even harming, taking us away from the truth and love we could truly share if we were without them.

I can now say that I have put away a lot of parenting Ideals and beliefs and my relation with my children has changed immensely. For instance I do not feel responsible for them anymore but instead I feel where I can support them in making loving choices in there lives that are truthful and sustainable. I have a more camaraderie relation with them then ever before and also more fun with and appreciation for each other.

Being a true father is that much simpler than I could ever imagine at the moment I started to develop myself in one when my daughter was born. I now know I am naturally a father for my own but also for any other children. Being a father is naturally there when it is needed and I do not require an example for that from outside in the form of any picture, ideal or belief.

I fully agree Kylie, healing of the ideals is needed to free ourselves from these and sharing how we experience and feel about them is a great way to heal ourselves. We are so much more than the ideals want us to believe. We are innately fathers, mothers for all our children as we know from our inner most what is needed at any moment of our lives. Why have we chosen to stray away from this knowing, creating a life of struggle and lack of self worth? It does not make sense to me compared to the joy I do now experience in life after letting go ideals I had about manny aspects of life.

The good father picture is a tricky one. It is not just what we present to our kids; it is also how we judge and assess them. We cannot help to present what we think is our fathering face to them, whatever it is. The problem is that in a sense we feel that ‘moulding’ the kids to it is the way. We expect them to behave in a specific way and we judge them accordingly. We are not raising a kid but creating a mini-me. This is what we enjoy. These ideals and behaviours harm our kids though, and force them to reduce themselves and to acquire a specific way of being so they can be accepted.

Thank you Eduardo to bring in the judgement part. I can feel the frustration and anger I have carried to my parents because I was not allowed to be myself but instead had to fulfil their needs and because of the fact that I was constantly judged on the aspects of life that were important for them.
I am now aware that my parents did not know any better in that time and I do not blame them for this in any way shape or form, but the evil in this is that I have also done this to my children because of my growing up and, if I do not stop and undo this way of parenting in this life, it will continue in the next generations.

We often don’t have true role models for parents and so we must cobble together our idea of what a good parent should be. Some of this comes from society but I feel a lot comes in reaction to our hurts, a knee jerk to the way we were parented. It is amazing to start questioning the way we parent and if it is true. Are we invested in how we look as parents and how our kids ‘turn out’ or do we connect with who they are and what support/guidance they need to be all they can be? It is a gradual process of stepping back, observing where we have invested and allowing our natural self to guide us.

A gradual process it is indeed Fiona, stepping back on our tracks and observe where we have invested in any way shape or form in being a good parent or for a specific result to be performed by our children. I also found lately, although I thought that out of reaction I was parenting completely different than my parents have parented me, that how I was parented was still influencing me in how I have raised my children. The way I have been brought up indeed has had a great influence on how I started to parent my children before I met Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine. By studying the Way of the Livingness and having healing session with Universal Medicine practitioners I have slowly became more aware of how I was and am in the upbringing of my children and I can now step back in my tracks to eventually find my natural self that will guide me in life.

Parenting becomes a different level when we allow the kids their ability to connect to their inner wisdom of what is true and good for them naturally. This connection is in every child and adult, but kids have this clear connection still without the hurts we adults have taken on. True parenting should be all about encouraging our kids to be with their inner knowing and connection to love and to who they really are – divine beautiful beings.

Thank you for sharing this insight Nico. It reveals how we can all be influenced by the ideals and beliefs of what it means to be a parent and how we think we have to be seen as being a ‘good’ parent and expect our children to show the world that we have made a good job of it. All that is called for from any of us, whether parent or child is love.

Unless we really know ourselves and have healed our childhood hurts, it will be very difficult to raise children from anything other then a conceptual basis, which changes according to the flavour of the year, and how we ourselves are dealing with life. Universal Medicine by the very nature of their courses, provides a foundation for all parents to be able to nurture and raise their children so they have the opportunity to be who they truly are.

Thank you Chris for raising this point, if we are not aware, our childhood hurts will guide us in our life, finding the perfect route to not expose the hurts that makes us looking outside for concepts on how to parent our children. Unless we heal the childhood hurts this merry go round will never end and will continue from generation to generation. Thanks to Universal Medicine there are now families raising children that wil be supported to be and stay who they truly are and the merry go round comes to a stop. In what a blessed time do we live and I enjoy being part of it.

Yes Chris, I love this fact that there is a place called Universal Medicine that presents all this amazing wisdom what we all know and have access to from deep within, to come up again as a living way. There is no need for roles and must do’s and have to be’s, only allowing to be who we are from our hearts connection.

So true Christoph, the current way of parenting is a harming way. Although most people do not have the intention to harm their children, they actually do by imposing a certain way of being on them by the way they parent.

Exactly Nico, we must stop imposing to our kids to be a certain way to fit in the game, true parenting is allowing to speak and work with the love we have inside of us, and encouraging our children that they do have always a choice to live from their love and not from the cover up and functioning fitting in mode.

Beautiful Blog. I really enjoyed your honesty. I like how you have presented that the reason we take on the father ideals and develop a picture of what fatherhood should be is because we are not trusting our natural love inside which is what will guide us. It feels true that when we trust our inner spark, that it is love that will be in relationships.

Beautiful written Nico, I can say the same about being in the mothering role, there are so many roles and should do’s and have to do’s to follow in our heads and I get it that they only exists because the lack of trust into ourselves and all what we naturally know and have access to from our inner heart.

Thank you Monika, an interesting point about trust you raise. To my feeling we have a lack of trust because we have walked away from our inner knowing, the steady and never changing truth that lives inside all of us. By the act of doing so we are on the mercy of what is brought to us form the outside world, that is far from steady, changes by the zeitgeist and always comes with many views, possibilities and fragmented, not as a whole. So choosing to live disconnected from our inner knowing will never gives us a steady and consistent answer to our questions opposed when we consult our inner heart. The answers that will come from there will be steady and consistent, giving us the feeling of trust that is so needed in our nowadays world full of turmoil.

What a beautiful honest sharing.It shows the after effects, when you don´t trust yourself and just behave out of autopilot. Your kids are lucky to have YOU back now- great you are revealing the evil of all these ideal how to be as a father.

Thank you Steffi, it is true that my children are lucky and so am I because I have now a true connection with them too. It is indeed about building trust in oneself through choosing our inner connection as we have all the answers to life available to us through this inner connection.

It is beautiful to read how you have unravelled what being a father means. Fathers offer the love, support and tenderness only a father/father figurer can bring. Girls need their fathers to be tender with them as do our sons. Our world is in quite a state because we have all forgotten what it truly means to be a parent/role model. It is great to see you are unravelling these misconceptions of parenthood, the world strongly needs this.

It is truly important that a man, a father, brings his natural tenderness into his parenting to his children as this quality is urgently needed in our societies. As you say Toni, because we have forgotten what true parenting is and on top of that, that men do not live their natural tenderness anymore, we as society are suffering from this. When I started unravelling my fatherhood patterns I was not aware of what the influence of this act should be, but now, slowly, the impact of parenting to us as parents, our children and to humanity as a whole is slowly revealed to me and it is amazing to see what a power I have by making the choice to reconnect to myself, from which all the natural adjustments to all facets of life will evolve from.

“Did I look for a certain type of fatherhood picture I was familiar with or did I select some on purpose, because they suited me the best, in order to not be confronted with the responsibility that comes with feeling and making my own choices?” Nick, I like how you asked this question and then brought it back to trusting the innate love and wisdom inside. Thank you.

Oh Nico, this is a fantastic blog. When I had my first daughter I struggled a lot with what I was supposed to be. I knew what was considered as a good mother in society and what I had seen but I also knew that this was not right for me, but in that I realised that I was not sure exactly what it was that I did feel was right. 16 Years later and I have 2 more little ones and the way that I am parenting them is much different to how I did it the first time round. Much more awareness, acceptance and allowing.

How beautiful that you have experienced both the unaware and aware instances of parenting your little ones. In general we do not have the chance in life to experience this and I sure that this is also a blessing for your 2 little ones.

It is truly beautiful Annie, to reconnect to the love and wisdom inside, because not only the answers come from there, but also the beautiful and plain questions emerge from this inner knowing in order to clear and deconstruct the ill ways we have chosen to live life in.

Thank you Nico, this is a great read. It is amazing to see how ideals and beliefs – the long list of what we think constitutes a good parent – really is much more complicated, than the simple truth of a child being met (with love) from their parent.

Thank you Johanne and I agree with what you say. When I was able to step back and observe how I was parenting I was amazed about the complexity I had build around my fatherhood. Since non of the points of the list ever fulfilled my underlying need for having a true relation with my children I needed another ideal to strive to. So some ideals I dropped of the list because I felt they did not contribute but others where added because the pain of not truly meeting my children was always there and I was in the illusion that acting in a certain way would solve this issue. I am grateful that I have met Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine, who have shown me that there is a true way of parenting, the way from the inner-heart that is averse of any complexity but only knows simplicity, simply being me in any situation in life.

Nico you seem to have had great intentions of nurturing and providing for your family, and even though you have revised what a good Father might look like from a different perspective now. It is a big responsibility to become a Parent and one we are mostly not very well prepared for I guess you could say we learn on the job , but how much more rewarding to have access to the knowledge shared by Serge Benhayon and the Ancient Wisdom teachings for Parent and child!

I completely agree with that Roslyn, that having acces to the Ancient Wisdom teaching as being presented by Serge Benhayon is of that a great value. Without these teachings and presentations of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine I wouldn’t have been able to make the changes in parenting I have now been able to establish.

It is crazy how we play along with the belief of what a successful child is and if they do not fit this then are considered a failure, coming from and perpetuating that who you are is not enough. The pressure of expectation that is imposed is huge not only for the father to achieve this so as not to feel that he has failed but also for the child to achieve this to so as not to let anyone down. And this sadly corrupts the true relationship between a father and a child. What you have shared is so powerful as it breaks down the ‘good father’ ideal that we have developed in society and shown that there is another truer way, that within we are enough and when we connect to this we do know what is needed – ‘This now reflects in my deepening connection with my children – a connection that is based on a true equalness, and a deep trust in myself and in what I feel.’ – so beautifully said Nico, thank you.

It is such a gift Carola, both to our children as to ourselves if we are able to let go of the false ideals and beliefs around parenting and do trust our inner connection to be our guide in everything we do, so also in parenting our children. By doing so we are breaking the existing patterns we have inherited from our parents and put them to a stop as our children will have the other experience, to be accepted, appreciated and honoured in full for who the truly are. This then will be the basis for the future generations to build on and to explore the true depth of what parenting our children in truth entails.

Thank you Nico. It so beautiful to realise that what we feel to do as a parent, or daughter, or what ever role we might have in life, is something worth listening to and actually true to do. I am definitely realising this and is very beautiful to feel we do know inside what is true to do in any situation.

Thank you Lieke, we do know what to do or how to behave in any situation we encounter in life. If we allow us to be guided by this inner trustknowing our lives and relationship become so precious and delicate I could have never imagined before.

Great to re -visit your article Nico. This sentence struck a cord with me this morning. ‘Did I look for a certain type of fatherhood picture I was familiar with or did I select some on purpose, because they suited me the best, in order to not be confronted with the responsibility that comes with feeling and making my own choices?’ While I do not have children these words can be applied to so many situations and relationships in life. I am feeling how I have hidden and taken on ways of being to avoid the responsibility of bringing the true me to the world. The process of unravelling these pictures is an amazing learning and I love getting to know the true me.

Unraveling all the pictures I held is indeed an amazing learning and it seems to never stop as well. The amazing thing for me in unraveling these pictures is that I become more aware of the true power I carry in me, the absoluteness I can feel in me knows how to deal with any situation that comes to me. I can now see the ridiculousness of taking on these pictures from the outside while there is such a strong connection in me to the all knowing, the all knowing we all can have a connection with if we choose for it.

I agree Nico, the unravelling is constant but the more things unravel, the clearer I feel within myself and my connection with the all. From this, the true confidence keeps on building and I am more willing to claim from this knowing and feel the inner power to live from this place.

From this trust in yourself Nico and in your honest knowing, your children could not have a better role model, but better still, they have a friendship with one of the most important relationships they’ll have, therefore forming the basis of which they can model all relationships on for the rest of their lives, beautiful.

Thank you Giselle, you bring in a new angle for me to look at, as I have never considered myself as a role model neither, as being a friend for my children I know this is true. The relationships we have with each other in families is more than just the role we play in life and is actually all based on the love we all equally share and want to live with. We can call it a father, a friend, son or daughter, wife or husband, whatever role we have, we meet with each other from our essence, from heart to heart.

We are shown in life reflections all the time that to be ourselves is not enough and that we have to be more. Of course when it comes to parenting, the very thing that asks us to be ourselves and the love we are, we are going to double take and think that the role of being a ‘super dad’ is what the perfect dad is all about when in fact we are already the perfect dad just by being ourselves.

That is just so great what you say here Joshua, nobody truly asks us to be the perfect supper dad, it is only our own perception from the people that are telling us in many ways that we are not good enough, that we have to work hard in order to be a ‘good’ human, and in the case of parenting we have to do our best to be a ‘good’ father or mother. I am so graceful that I have found my way to Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine who have helped me to let go of this striving in my life, and in return I have regained the true me, that is well equipped to do everything what life is asking me to do with with the quality of being simply myself.

Yes Joshua, when we perceive and/or are constantly confirmed in not being enough we are naturally going to take this concept into our parenting – to me the most important job in the world. When we can let go of the notion that we have to be more through doing because we are not enough, and embrace that everything we are is in fact all that is needed it puts a whole new spin on approach and quality of life.

To true Michelle, when I parent from the space of ‘I need to be a better Mum’ or ‘I’m not doing enough’ I get stressed and exhausted and no one gets me. Most of the time this happens when I haven’t been listening to what I need or not been caring for myself. We can’t love another until we first love ourselves is something that is confirmed for me time and time again with parenting and in any relationship.

Brilliant Joshua, very well said. We certainly are already amazing by just being ourselves and from living and expressing from this, everything we do becomes evolutionary, inspirational, easy and flows.

Thank you Nico,.To let go of the external trappings of ideals and beliefs and allow the knowing of your inner heart to freely express is an absolute gift of gold and for your children a bountiful treasure.

A bountiful treasure it is Barbara, when we are ready to follow the impulses from our heart above the thoughts of our mind by the pictures we have made about how life should look like, this treasure will unfold itself for us. Our body knows and is always prepared to deliver that what is needed in any situation of our life. To trust this connection is so powerful as it will present to us ways in which we can develop true relationships with anyone we meet on an equal basis, as that is the true nature of our essence. We will then have the absolute gifts of gold, the bountiful treasures of life.

It is great to have a father talk openly about this and to open up conversations like this so that people can explore what actually feels true for them and then be inspired to live that more than the pictures of what they think they need to be or how they think they need to do things.

That is the important thing Kristy, we have to start the conversation based on how it feels for us and not for how we think about it. It is a matter of feeling into our bodies how much the life we live actually is affecting our bodies. Do we restrict it in its natural movements or do we allow to move it in its natural way corresponding to the actual energy we live with? We have to explore all of this as this is the way to true liberation for each of us, for all of humanity, the liberation of the imprisonment of all the imposed ideals and believes we restrict our lives with.

I cannot speak from the point of view of a parent, but as a daughter I have seen the roles that parents take on… sparked by a fear of not being seen to ticking the ‘good’ box and how that projecting these regurgitated ideals and beliefs of how to be a parent can be unintentionally harming in denying a child to grow free from the conformities these beliefs promote. Parents are generally not advised to trust what they feel is true and encourage a child to do the same so are given and take on all the parenting advice they can… and thus not allowing the beauty and knowing of how to be that comes with building and trusting what comes naturally through a loving and deep connection with yourself and your child.

Beautifully said Samantha, because we are not inspired or advised to be just ourselves in any way shape or form in our parenting but do get unintentional advice about how we should parent instead. This then feeds our lack of self worth and the insecurity that comes from it and continuously keeps us away from the possibility that just being ourselves is the key to all our questions in life, as that is never promoted nor lived by the majority of people in our societies.

Reading this Nico it came to me that, most new experience’s in life are set up to be a big thing, scary, or uncertain which creates many questions of ‘Am I capable?’ and looking outside of ourselves for how we should be dealing with it or acting. I wonder if this is what can get in the way of us connecting to what we naturally feel to do in new situations, like becoming a parent, and asking for help or support if we need to?

So true what you reveal here to me Aimee, that life is set up in a way that new things are big, difficult and scary, instead of accepting these as opportunities of experiences of life and to evolve in who we are, in the knowing that we are well equipped for whatever will come on our life path.

Thank you Nico, if we allow it, being a father is a fast track to self awareness, because we have a reflection right in front of us every day, from when we wake up to when we go to sleep, and this reflection will always be an opportunity for us to let go of old beliefs and ideals, and to simply be.

So true Chris, and I am thankful to have these reflections in my life as they are that valuable to me and assist me tremendous in my return to what it truly is to live as a father, a men in the world. It is as you say ultimately all that simple, but for that we have to let go of the images we have taken on about how our lives should look like and the reflections of our children are there to support us in this process if we allow ourselves to go there.

I have found the ideals and beliefs I have around parenthood and family in general run very deep, before coming to Universal Medicine I really could get no perspective on this at all, I felt these things so strongly that I could not see another way. As I build a connection to myself I am now finding I can see beyond the deep hooks of these beliefs and I can begin to know what is true parenting and what is not. Your article inspires me to hold this more continually in my awareness, thanks Nico.

Thank you Tim, it is true that the images we hold on parenting and family are quite strong and also held by the family we live in and therefore are enforced in us from many angles. Thanks to Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine we are able to see that there is another way to live, beyond the created images but impulsed from our innermost where we are connected with the universal knowledge of life and we can connect to whenever we choose to do so.

Nico a really great honest blog when fathers or mothers are stuck in the ‘must provide’ role, they miss out on so much, a child loves to spend quality time with their parents. You have raised some great points in your blog, ideals and beliefs stifle who we truly are.

What you say Sally, in fact it truly stifles us in all the grandness that we actually are when we allow images into our lives dictating how to be and behave in life. We have to let go of these and liberate us all form the images that are abundantly provided by the false light that tries to keep control on us. By doing so, the underlaying true nature of us is given the opportunity to surface and we will be able to enjoy the exploration of this new way of living, the living from our truth, that innately lives is us all equally so. No need for pictures anymore as the truth is there for each and everyone of us to be discovered.

Everything in society is set up for me to doubt myself and ‘believe’ what I am told, instead of trusting what I know and feel deep inside? When I read this sentence Nico it reminded me of a conversation that I had with a friend the other day. She was telling me that before her son was born her husband said that if the baby was a boy that he will not be kissing the baby and telling him that he loves him as that would be softening him up. However when the baby was born he could not help but shower him in kisses and constantly tell him that he loves him.

That is beautiful Heidi. Our young babies are that much love that we must be really hard and touch to keep that outside of us. It is a great lesson for the husband of your friend, and for all the men equally so, that the images we hold about how to parent a baby boy, we can put aside and just allow our inner feeling to be our guide and shower our young baby boys with kisses and love.

This is such a beautiful way to raise children Nico – to not only see and treat them with equality, but to provide ‘…a loving connection where a child will be met and seen for who they truly are.”
I have found that letting go of the ideals and beliefs I was raised with, and not putting such expectations on my children, has allowed them to unfold and develop an ever deepening relationship with themselves and feeling able to express from their true essence.
Thanks for your inspiring blog Nico.

Thank you Peter. It is a relief both ways Peter, for the children to have the allowance of being themselves and being appreciated for that and for us as parents that we are not responsible for there life, their choices, as that is completely up to them as we are not in the need their succes to be shown of as the result of our parenting.

A most inspiring reply Peter Campbell – how lovely it is that you have also been able to bring true parenting to your own children and have the joy of watching them “develop an ever deepening relationship with themselves and feeling able to express from their true essence”.

Thank you Nico for a great article, we are so run by society and it’s ideals that we rarely think outside the box. I remember from my time raising kids there was a book out on parenting by a Dr, it made sense at the time. But totally off the track as I have come to see parenting in a different light. Equality, respect and trusting that there is a knowing in children and providing the space to allow them to express in full who they truly are.

Thanks Jill, I share the same experience with you that we are equally knowing independent of our age in this life. There is only some more experience with the practicalities of this time of life with the more elderly compared to our young ones. And parenting in the understanding of this makes such a difference to the way I was when I first became father and to how I now can see it. I can now see my children more and more as equal to me and that I can learn from them the same as they can learn from me.

Thank you Joe, and a great point you bring in, that it is of importance to appreciate and honour our inner awareness and sensitivity as to me these are my guides to live a life of truth, the truth to my inner most from where I am connected with the ancient wisdom. In that connection there is a knowing that is far beyond the knowledge we are fed with in our temporal world. When we restrict ourselves to only live this temporal life and do not consider ourselves to be part of something much bigger and more continuous, we reduce ourselves to a lesser being and can only rely on what we are told how we have to be instead.

Thank you for exposing so many ideals and beliefs around being a father Nico – many of which relate to mothers too. And these ideals and beliefs don’t change over the decades – they are just different flavours of the same!
This also brings a greater understanding for daughters as well, of why our fathers were the way they were, and takes away the blame and irresponsibility too because as daughters we took on our own ideals and beliefs about how our fathers should be and also how we should be!

So true Paula, if we do not take the responsibility of living to the impulse of our inner heart, we live something that we are not and in doing so we not only hurt ourselves but also everybody we live with. In other words, if I live the true father, my daughter does not have to take on any ideals and beliefs of how I as a father should have lived my life either, and there would not be any reason and ground for any blame towards me from her.

I was inspired to ponder upon what my ideals and beliefs regarding this may be. Interestingly reading the list of these in the blog I felt that they do not make sense to me but I instantly had the question to ask of myself – compared to what? the answer – my own ideals and beliefs. Very exposing, thank you Nico.

Thank you Michael, it is so easy to say that is not me, but in truth where does that come from. Great that you bring this to the fore as it is important to recognise that we in many ways are lived by our ideals and beliefs instead as being impulsed from our inner most, the way of living we are returning to.

Thank you for sharing this. It is wonderful and revolutionary what you share here Nico as this understanding can entirely change the quality and style of the way we parent and the relationships we have with our children. It is huge really because despite all the parenting courses and guidance available, no one has said it like this before.

Thank you Joshua, and I must agree when I look around this is not a common way how children are parented in our current societies and therefore it is huge and important to be said. As parenting is laying the fundamental basis for the lives of every human being, how would the world look like if we would parent from our inner knowing instead of from the images that are given to us? There would be more understanding and an unconditional love to each other that naturally will assist us in evolving us back to a life in brother hood, a way of living we are made for and deserve to live.

There are far too many ideals and beliefs to count that fathers, mothers, children, siblings, friends, males and females (just to name a few) have to contend with everyday everywhere we look in society. But underneath all these roles and expectations we feel we need to live up to is the simplicity of ourselves being just who we naturally are just waiting to come alive and be expressed. Great blog Nico.

So true Suse, it is just the simplicity of living from our inner heart, the place that is void of complexity, that will bring us the beauty of building real relationships with each other, relationships that will nurture and support all that are involved in their return to love and the reconnection to their soul. So I decided to stop living all these roles and allow the simplicity of my inner heart to come alive and be my guide in life and I enjoy this so much that I cannot keep the for myself but give it expression everywhere I go.

I have come to understand in my 16 years of parenting that me being in the role of a parent does not work, for me or my kids. If I parent as extension of who I am then I feel there is more on offer naturally for my children. When things would go wrong or we would hit a bumpy patch I would reach for the latest book or online article or sign up to parenting workshops, it was distracting myself as much as possible from connecting to what I knew was already true and right for me and my family at the time. I don’t believe I have all the answers at my fingertips but when i get stuck it much more a reflection and an opportunity for me to grow and the kids than the great disaster I would want it to be.

I do understand that too Nicole, I also do not have all the answers at my finger tips, but that is because I do not trust my inner knowing enough, that would give me all the answers to life when I would be fully in connection with it. What I know from experience is the fact that looking outside myself only distracts me from the fact that I already know and have all the answers, and in that I delay myself returning to that and to truly serve my children in providing them with a way of parenting that they deserve as being equal Sons of God.

Nico I love that you have shared that parenting is ‘ providing a loving connection where a child will be met and seen for who they truly are”. I have often felt that this does not only pertain to parenting but to all connections made life. Remembering to just be the GREAT YOU rather than the ‘good you’

I love this nb, and I prefer the GREAT YOU above the ‘good you’ as this latter has never fulfilled me. Being great instead is just what it is and in living that I have the most beautiful experiences in meeting other people, experiences of mutual growth and expansion.

there are so many images, or as Nico says, pictures, that are deeply implanted in us, we try to live up to them, we compare ourselves to these images, they have nothing to offer to us except comparison and one of the most important things we can do is to recognize when the images or pictures are running us, and to start to truly let them go.

Indeed Chris, it is important to recognise the moments when we are driven by the images we have allowed into our lives, as non of these images is true to our way of being. When we live from our essence we do not need any image to live up to and there is not any reason to compare to any of them as these images portray mostly to a way of doing and behaving, while it is just about living our essence, and that is a state of being in which no image to live up or compare to is required.

Parenting is absolutely rife with ideals and beliefs and I fell for many different forms of them as I raised my children. As you have stated Nico, I didn’t even realise that I was following a set of external rules and measuring myself against some blurry marker of what a good mother looked like. There was never a sense that I was enough and that I had a deep wisdom inside of me to guide me or that if I stepped back from the control factor that my children actually had a lot of wisdom and knowing of their own. I am still unravelling the ideals and beliefs even though my children are adults. It has really shown me just how entrenched lots of patterns have been and it’s no wonder I was so blind to any other way of parenting. Thankfully, there is no time like the present to learn and rebuild the foundations of my relationship with my children.

Indeed Helen, there is no time like the present to rebuild the foundations of the relationships with our children and it is such a beautiful thing to do, to unravel alle the images I held in parenting and being a father. I was not only blind to another way of parenting but also blind for the true beauty they are and the gift that they borough with them. They brought the gift for me to reconnect with my inner most, but I could not see the value of that because of the images I held about being a good father and parenting instead.

I can feel that the fragility and vulnerability that you felt after the midwife left was also a reflection of how as men we generally do not live this enough ourselves. I have felt the same around babies in the past too and it feels like an invitation to go deeper and embrace more of that in our livingness

Thank you for this observations Joshua, and you are spot on. Babies do invite us to be more of ourselves and part of that is to be vulnerable and fragile, which is not a commonly accepted and imaged quality of a man, of which the more accepted quality is to be rough and tough instead. But this does not take away the fact that we men are equally tender, vulnerable and fragile to women and the image of being rough and tough is now exposed to me as being a false one as actually I do not feel anything of that in me, not one ounce of it.

I keep coming back to your blog Nico, every time I do it seems to reveal more of the roles, images and perceptions I hold towards fatherhood and towards being a man. You are absolutely correct in saying that these perceptions are unconsciously imposed on us and even the mention of these words brings up all sorts of connotations and ideals we hold around them.

Great comment Joshua, beautiful sharing of your experience around babies. It is very beautiful to observe how most women and men are able to naturally be tender, gentle, fragile, vulnerable and delicate when handling babies especially when they allow themselves to feel that they are the same too. I have also witnessed some people become very nervous around babies, it seems they become awkward or afraid to touch or hold them, which was interesting to observe. I agree babies certainly invite us to be delicate, fragile and vulnerable, and for some people this may be a bit confronting so they tend to avoid this incredible connection.

Awesome blog Nico, I have young children too and as a mothers I can recognise that these roles, ideals and beliefs you’ve listed are not dissimilar to the ones I held in relation to parenting. I am also learning to let them go and parent from being deeply connected to myself first and what is then needed will naturally present itself. I am inspired to parent from my natural delicate and loving way and not from outside influences but trusting what I feel is true.

Awesome Chan, we are so beautiful when we allow ourselves just to be in everything that we are and anything that we do, not influenced by images or pictures provided to us, but completely with ourselves. Parenting from there is a complete new dimension and allows our children to be themselves as well connected to the source of love and with that they will become aware of the fact that there is a responsibility to living a human life and that is to maintain and grow this inner connection and quality for as long as you live.

Reading this today really brought up some past ideals and beliefs that I had around motherhood. Self doubt was huge as I ventured into being a mother. I sat for a while with your question Nico “Where did these ideals and beliefs of being a ‘good father’ come from”? As with motherhood to do the so called ‘right thing’ feels now very imposing and not listening or overruling that inner wisdom that flows so naturally when around babies/young children feels now like the very cause of my huge self-doubt and anxiousness that took over a lot of the time.

It is indeed no surprise that we become anxious and doubtful if we are not connected with ourselves. And as you say Marion, we do know from that inner wisdom when we are around babies and young children exactly how we have to be but we have never been told that fact. The opposite happens, we are told from many angles what we should or not should do. But thanks to Serge Benhayon I have become aware of this fact, as he was the one that told me this, I do now know that I have a choice to either connect to my inner heart that gives me strength and self-confidence, or to listen to the outer images, that in truth only make me doubtful and anxious instead.

Parenthood comes with so many beliefs and ideal and what that looks like. There is nowhere in the unwritten manual that asks us to hold this new life and support it to unfold in a nest that is made of love and equality. I would not have known what this meant when I had my children and I went into learned behavior’s modeled on the way I was raised. This is a great read for those finding their way and are open to feeling what is true.

“Did I look for a certain type of fatherhood picture I was familiar with or did I select some on purpose, because they suited me the best, in order to not be confronted with the responsibility that comes with feeling and making my own choices?” Great question Nico! The same can be asked of mothers, daughters, brother, sisters, sons, friends, lovers, husbands, wives, colleagues, artists, doctors, housewives, shop assistants…every role we take on . They all come with a picture, and image attached, one that we have chosen from those on offer from society as a whole. As you have brilliantly exposed, we chose the bits of the picture that we feel most comfortable with, that don’t rock our boat, which means we can claim we are just ‘doing what needs to be done’, when our irresponsibility (which not rocking the boat is because in that we choose not to speak up when it’s needed) is called into question.

There are SO many concepts that we have taken on about parenting…. And its no wonder really … I mean , how can we really parent someone if we don’t know ourselves… we can’t help but just pass on belief systems.

A brilliant article, exposing head-on the fact that the prevailing images and pictures we hold about parenting in fact serve to create self-doubt and not-good-enough in us, when in fact all we need to do is trust our own inner knowing of what to do and how to be. Just be ourselves and let our children be themselves. Love what you say about equalness too, because those pictures are steeped in role supremacy and positional power – a tried and tested recipe in how to suppress the natural joy and expression of a growing mini-adult.

Thank you Nico and being a father is no different to any other relationship. The more you deepen the relationship with how you are feeling the more other ‘things’ no longer seem to fit. So as with any relationship how things are feeling to you needs to be constantly adjusted and refined as things are always changing. How are the children doing, how are your relationships around you, how are you feeling, are the same things coming up again and again. We put ‘parenting’ and ‘fatherhood’ at the front of many things and I am not saying they’re not important but how we are in those is the most important thing, the quality we are bringing all of the time. I love being a father, not from what it gives me or what I give it but because of what the relationship allows me to see, what it reflects to me all of the time. I just need to be ready to look and listen.

‘Everything in society is set up for me to doubt myself and ‘believe’ what I am told, instead of trusting what I know and feel deep inside?’ So true Nico, I can relate to what you share here, the biggest key for me has been to develop the relationship with myself first and deeply appreciate who I am and then all my relationships naturally have a different quality – a more true and loving connection.

The deepening connection you now share with your children having consciously unravelled the pictures you held of fatherhood, is a beautiful confirmation that they are not true nor needed to be a father.

We take on so many ideals, beliefs and pictures from society of how to be ‘a good parent’, which can then be discarded as we trust our own wisdom and feelings. “Through this discarding of what is not me I am becoming more true, more who I really am – which is much, much more than just being a ‘good father’! Beautiful Nico.

This is an interesting reflection of how we also “father”, “mother” and attempt to control ourselves – often running our lives on ideals and beliefs instead of allowing ourselves to connect to our all-knowing source and live from that wisdom. We cannot bring to others what we have not given to ourselves.

Thank you for sharing this honest article Nico, I am sure you speak for many parents. For me what I feel is the most important aspect is that society as a whole does not appreciate the inherent wisdom that can come through one so young, and so we assume we have to give it to the child even though we don’t often connect to that in ourselves. So we fill them with more beliefs and ideals, false wisdom, as you say to prepare them to be a part of society’s ways instead of preparing them to lead the way out of it.

Unfortunately inconsistency in coming from that innate wisdom gets in the way of building trust in the wisdom a child can bring. So that when a child behaves shall we say unwisely or unlovingly and in keeping with the chaos they are surrounded in we then impose these other falsehoods such as you must behave, be good, conform, based on our ideals, and then this skews things even more as the child looses its own innate knowing even more.. As you say we need to know our selves free of those beliefs and ideals so that we can meet children in that spaciousness to explore themselves in truth. Challenging in the world we have built today.

‘The answer for me has been to slowly unravel all my fatherhood pictures, to become aware of them and discard them, one by one. ‘ I love this for it is true of any role we take on that is made up of these pictures and we can do this unravelling slowly but surely till they are all gone, for if we stay with it they will be for sure.

Hey Nico, great article. Already three years old and I just found it. Very true that we live from pictures, beliefs and ideals when it comes to being a father, One of them is that a father is only a father to his own ” flesh and blood’ . That is also an illusion, can I say, not being father of ‘ flesh and blood’ to any child, but feeling a true father more and more to many children that are not physically mine.

Parenting is so much more than what I thought it was when I became a father in this life. As I have described above, there where many ideals and beliefs that at that moment of time formed me in being with my children and in fact kept both my children and myself lesser in our expression. I do now understand that there is a relationship to be built in which we can prosper and evolve instead of to form one another to a certain image, that in fact, although everything from the outside would look ‘good’ and ‘nice’, is not prosperous and evolving at all.

It is so great you chose to share your experience Nico. I feel this ‘not knowing’ or fear of failure is very common with men, who compare themselves unfavourably to women and think that they somehow lack a parenting gene. Today it is clearer than ever to me that we are all born natural masters, mentors, mothers and fathers, and it’s only the things that have told us we are ‘dumb’ that we let get in the way. With an open heart and willingness to be truthful we have all we need.

This is a deeply toching blog Nico, as I have experienced this transformation to fatherhood without ideals from close up as your son. It is beautiful what kind of relationships grow from this release of pictures, a relationship that is honest and without perfection where we learn to evolve together in the life we have chosen to live together learning each other so much.

I can agree on that Mary, we are asked by our children to start living in a different way, as from their birth they are an emanation of love, nothing more but also nothing less, only love and that is what they bring with them and abundantly share with us all the time. It is up to us as a parent to surrender to this offering and submit ourselves to another way of living, based on the commonly shared love we all come from and constantly are connected to and our children do remind us of.

What a great unravelling Nico, and something to honour deeply. We are steeped in such expectations in the roles we play in families – mother, father, daughter, son, husband, wife… often at the detriment of what could be a relationship of true potential, where each has the opportunity to learn and grow, inspired without reservation from the other, and yes, actually holding the other as equal and seeing him or her in their own true light (not as our own ‘product’ if you will).
And so, the breaking down what has held us back from the true love possible between us is essential, that we may extend our knowing of all that relationships can be way beyond our families, into our work relationships, societally and more. The exploration of that which hasn’t worked is essential in this dismantling and unravelling, as you say Nico… Thank-you so much for sharing here.

Indeed Victoria, there is a lot to dismantle in relationships as I shared in above blog in respect with my relationship with my children as an example. In choosing to be not aware of the false beliefs and ideals behind our intentions we continue to build up that what we now or anytime have to dismantle in order to be able to live once again that what already lives within each and every one of us. A divinity that is so much more than we ever could have dreamt of, so what is holding us from this dismantling while the outcome will give us amazing loving and simple lives.

A blog (or book) could be written on each point you’ve raised here Nico. To highlight just one: “My children have to listen to me because I am their father.”
How empowering it is for a child when they are not taught to ‘obey’ simply by virtue of their role in a family (or indeed any situation), but to honour what is true first and foremost, and develop and nurture their relationship with the truth that they know within in the process…
Phew, the control and dominion we have not only allowed, but fostered…

When we control, or at least try to control another human being – no matter their age, we dis-empower them. Our role is to raise aware independent adults, if we try to control everything they do say and think then we take away their ability to be discerning and therefore they are left at the mercy of being caught in the influence of what is around them.

Thank you Nico for a great sharing, I can say as a parent way back when my children were young it was mostly about control and obedience and the parent knows best, absolutely no honouring of the love that children are and the wisdom they bring with them, and definitely no equality, this was how parenting was when connected to our ideals and beliefs long ago of how we should be. So much to let go of in connecting to the truth of who we all are as divine sons of God at whatever age we are, treating all with honour, respect and equality.

We need to talk about these ‘unsaid rules and ways’ more. There is far more passed onto us that we are often aware of. Far more than just in our education at school or at home per se. Often what is passed down are ways of being, which we see, feel, hear and witness another living like and think this is how life is to be lived and this is what is normal. As a son, growing up and seeing how my father raised me, there is so much now that I can say makes me reflect that I am living like my father! But this is simply because I am choosing to live the same choices he made when raising me.

It’s great to expose the many ideals and beliefs we get caught up in when we become parents. I was certainly anxious about getting it ‘right’ whilst not being clear about what that looked like! Feeling that how my daughter was reflected on me I put pressure on us both to present a picture of how well we were coping especially as I became a single parent when my daughter was still a toddler. Allowing our children the gift of being themselves is so beautiful and from this I have learnt immeasurably more than when I was imposing my fear-based way that was so restrictive for both of us.

For me it was very healing to care for my father at the end of his life as we both let go of the father and daughter roles and connected on a deeper level. Thank you Nico for being so honest about your journey with this and I can feel how my father was constrained by the expectations he put on himself within his parenting role which caused many problems between us when I was growing up. We complicate it so much when all that is required is simply to connect to the other person and feel what is needed in that moment.

Every ideal or belief that exists in this world is absent of the one true thing that confirms us the most – love. As children, this is all we need first and foremost, to be confirmed for who we are in essence. This is what we all want, and failing to receive it is why we spend the rest of our lives in search for it through societies pale versions of what love is – recognition, acceptance, approval, attention. Love is our greatest guide, and our connection to love within ourselves first is what allows us to be confident in who we are, and to be with another in love. With this quality, we offer true role modelling to the world, to our children to our friend and family and all we are connected to as we offer a way of being that confirms who we all are. Thank you Nico for sharing this valuable revelation of the power of true love, and how our connection to our love is the greatest teacher for us all to learn to be who we are.

It is not uncommon for parenting to take the form of guiding a child into the mould the parents expect the child to fit. It’s hideous and the expectation of a parent leave little room for a child to grow into who they truely are.

Nico, it is beautiful that you have come to this awareness of the impositions we as parent or carers for children can impose on them due to what we are carrying that is not true to who we are. Our job as adults is simply to get ourselves out of the way and allow the child to express what is innately in them to express so that they do not end up a mere puppet of the system we have fallen ‘victim’ to (by our own choosing). This does not mean that we raise anarchists, but more so support, nurture and allow children to express the truth of who they are so in turn our way of living can be restored to be an accurate reflection of this truth and this beauty.

I am quite fascinated by the roles we take on as parents as I am finding they are a total abdication of the true responsibility we are given through the blessing of having a child to raise. Connection and love are all we will ever need, yet because we have less trust in that relationship and the power of the boundaries and learning that can come from that way of living we go to the doing and the roles as a form of control because it feels safer.

After reading your blog Nico, I cannot but wonder how many of our ideals and beliefs shadow and haunt us in regard to us considering we are good enough according to those shadows expectations, and not the potential of who we are.